


To Be Myself

by wowbright



Series: To Be Myself [1]
Category: Glee, Yentl (1983)
Genre: 1984 Summer Olympics, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Barbra Streisand - Freeform, Canon Gay Relationship, Coming Out, Coming of Age, Gen, Generation X - Freeform, HIV/AIDS, Judy Garland - Freeform, M/M, early AIDS crisis, gay identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 14:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 48,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1270600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wowbright/pseuds/wowbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Kurt had been born 25 years earlier? A story about Gen X Kurt Hummel learning about love and, most importantly, learning to be himself, 1976-1985.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1976

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [To Be Myself](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/38881) by Wowbright. 



> Also on [Tumblr](http://wowbright.tumblr.com/post/78609883059/on-ao3-on-tumblr)
> 
>  **Beta:**  A zillion thanks to corinna (ao3)/[chiasmuslovesme](http://tmblr.co/m_BuVSD2BFzleXckNpa886g) (tumblr) for helping me find the fic's voice and finish it!  
>  **Artist:**[hopelesslydevotedgleek](http://tmblr.co/mSUlAwW0-bja3t50DqaphMw) (tumblr) made amazing art for this. Look! Look! Isn't it beautiful? She made art for my story I'm still swooning.  
>  **Additional thanks:** To everyone who responded to weird random questions I posted to tumblr and encouraged me in the writing of this fic.  
>  **Author's notes:** Wondering about the towels in Rachel's bathroom or what Kurt's alarm clock looked like? Want to see the cover of that _Newsweek_ Kurt reads in 1983? I have a lot of extra headcanon and many historical notes and photos for this fic. I've posted some of them already on tumblr and will be posting more. You can find them under my [2014 khbb fic headcanon](http://wowbright.tumblr.com/tagged/2014%20khbb%20fic%20headcanon) tag.  
> 

**1976**

Kurt didn’t expect anyone to be at the playground near the hospital that afternoon. Now that it was winter, the coldness of the metal playground equipment tended to override its fun. So it was a surprise to find a girl in a matching pink cap and parka sitting on one of the lower rungs of the ladder leading up to the slide, crying into her mittens.

“Are you okay?” Kurt said, stepping closer to the girl. She was small – smaller than Kurt, anyway – but he guessed from her bell bottoms and the fashionable platform shoes she was wearing that she was at least in first grade. He wondered if she knew someone in the hospital, too.

She looked up, brushing away the blanket of straight brown hair hanging across her face. “Oh, I didn’t hear you.”

“Sorry. Do you want me to go away?” He hoped she wouldn’t say “yes,” because he didn’t really have any other place to go while he waited for his dad to finish his visit. It was against hospital policy for children under 13 to visit the floor where Kurt’s mom was staying, and Kurt was only eight. On her good days, Kurt’s dad would wheel her down to the cafeteria and Kurt would show off his latest craft project while the three of them ate Jell-O or ice cream.

Today wasn’t a good day.

The girl wiped the back of her mittens against her face and shook her head. “No,” she said. “I could use a friend.”

The phrase struck Kurt as quite adult and cosmopolitan. “Are you from New York?” he said, because it was the first thing he thought of.

Her sniffling turned into laughter – but the sweet kind of laughter, not the horrible mocking kind that some of the boys at school directed at him during gym class. “No, I’m from Lima. Why did you think I’m from New York?” The girl’s smile was big and toothy, like his mother’s. Despite his lack of a hat, Kurt felt warm down to his toes.

He shrugged and leaned his sleeved arm against the ladder’s rail. “You talk like a grown-up.”

“Oh, _thank_ you,” she said, blinking happily and adjusting her knit cap over her hair like a crown. “Well, my mom lives in New York, so maybe that’s why. And Dad and Uncle Hiram say I’m ambitious beyond my years.” Her self-satisfied smile turned back into a frown and she let out a shuddering sigh. “Which is why it doesn’t make any sense that they won’t let me see [_A Star Is Born_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ2lgbexOBI&list=PL-cIAjOpypsE9uz6vZnYOucuRitY5PE7o&index=13) _!_ I’m mature enough to handle an R-rated movie.” She burst into tears again.

“You mean the new one? With Barbra Streisand?”

She looked up, startled. “Are you a fan of hers, too?”

“My aunt has _Funny Girl_ record. I listen to it all the time at her house.” Kurt reached down and patted the girl’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. My parents won’t take me to _A Star is Born,_ either. Did you get to see the one with Judy Garland on Channel 35 last weekend?”

The girl swallowed a sob. “N-no. D-Daddy said it’s too distressing for a girl my age, but I _know_ he watched it because I could hear him singing along with it after I was in bed.”

“My dad wouldn’t let me watch it either. Even though Judy Garland’s my _favorite_ singer ever, _and_ I promised to do all the dishes and not complain about his cooking for the rest of the year.”

The girl looked up at him with wide eyes. “Really? You love her, too? Not just _Wizard of Oz?”_

“I like the _Wizard of Oz,_ but my favorite song of hers is ‘[I Can’t Give you Anything But Love](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4bwGlQRWyg&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W).’”

“That’s my favorite, too!” The girl jumped up from the slide and grabbed Kurt by both hands before he could back away, bouncing on her toes in time with her speech. “My dad’s favorite is ‘[I’m Just Wild About Harry](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDu-qmYtEdU&index=57&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W),’ though. He sings it at every family sing-along, except he changes ‘Harry’ to ‘H-’” She went suddenly still. “‘Holly. He changes it to ‘Holly.’”

“I’ve never heard that one,” Kurt mumbled, looking down at the toes of his unfashionable winter boots. “My aunt only has _Judy at Carnegie Hall._ ”

“Oh,” the girl said. She squeezed his arm through his thick parka sleeves. “Well, that’s okay. You can come over to my house and listen to it. We have a bunch of her records.”

Kurt’s heart sped up. “Really?”

“Sure!” she said.

“I’d love that.” He grabbed her hands and squeezed them and was just about to ask her to marry him once they grew up, when he realized he didn’t know the most important thing about her. “What’s your name? I’m Kurt.”

“Nice to meet you, Kurt,” the girl said with a smile that could light up Broadway – or at least the front of the Lima Community Theater, which was the closest thing to Broadway that Kurt had ever seen. “I’m Rachel Barbra Berry.”

* * *

Kurt thought he must have the wrong house when the door was answered by a middle-aged black man with a voice like maple syrup.

“I’m sorry, I –” Kurt was about to apologize, but Rachel came bounding down the stairs.

“Daddy! Is it Kurt?” She poked her head around the edge of the door. “Kurt! It’s you!”

“Hi!” Kurt shook his head to recover from the shell-shock.

Rachel didn’t seem to notice. She grabbed Kurt by the hand and pulled him in. “Daddy,” she said, looking up at the man. “This is Kurt. Kurt, this is LeRoy Berry.”

“Hello, Mr. –” Kurt started, reaching out to shake hands. Looking into the man’s face now, he felt like an idiot. Mr. Berry had the same nose and bright smile as Rachel. Of course he was her father.

“Call me LeRoy. Mr. Berry makes me feel old.”

Another man’s voice came from the end of the hall. “Do we finally get to meet the famous Kurt Hummel?”

“That’s my Uncle Hiram,” Rachel explained, taking Kurt’s hand again and tugging. “Come. I’ll introduce you.”

They found Hiram in the narrow galley kitchen, mixing up a bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough. “For our guest of honor,” Hiram said, tipping the bowl toward Kurt. “I wasn’t sure if you prefered the dough or the cookies, so I haven’t put them in the oven yet.”

It was like Kurt had walked into a fairy tale. He was royalty and here was his private chef. “Um, both,” he said.

Hiram presented them each with spoons and set the bowl of batter on the counter. “Dig in, kids.”

“Thank you, Mr. – Is your last name Berry, too?” Kurt said.

“Just call me Hiram.”

Rachel hadn’t been kidding when she’d said they had a bunch of Judy Garland records at her house. Kurt counted almost 20 albums, and they had a couple books full of her singles, too. “I’m Just Wild About Harry” was on an old 78 rpm  printed in 1943, back before either of Kurt’s parents were born.

Rachel let Kurt hold it in his hands. He handled it carefully by the edges, angling the record so he could watch the light from the floor lamp shift across its surface, unmarred by scratches. “It’s beautiful,” he said, sounding exactly as his mother did when the first crocuses came up every spring.

“And you haven’t even heard it yet!” Rachel said, clapping. “Hiram changes the needle on the record player every other month. It keeps all our records flawless.”

He handed the record back to Rachel. “So is Hiram your mom’s brother? I mean, he’s not your dad’s brother, right?" He didn't add _Because your dad’s black and I don’t think Hiram is_. He wasn't sure about the etiquette of saying such things out loud.

Rachel rolled her eyes at him. "Does he _look_ like my dad's brother?"

Kurt shrugged. "They both have curly hair."

Rachel laughed. "No. They're definitely not brothers." She smiled mysteriously before turning away to set the record on the player.

* * *

They got together again during winter break, after Rachel called Kurt to tell him that she’d gotten the soundtrack to the new _A Star is Born_ on the last night of Chanukah. Listening to records soon became a weekly thing with the two of them; it was usually at Rachel’s house because she had the better record player and it gave Kurt’s dad a chance to visit the hospital without having to leave Kurt at the playground or with his perennially tipsy Aunt Mildred.

Kurt preferred Rachel’s house, anyway, and not only because he felt the absence of his mother less acutely there than he did at home. She had more records than Aunt Mildred, for one. Also, Rachel’s house was always clean. The music room had a deep auburn shag carpet that didn’t itch like the one in his own living room, but was so soft he could sometimes convince himself, when he lay on it, that he was sleeping on the back of a hibernating bear. In the bathroom they had Yves Saint Laurent hand towels, which were so beautiful in their graphic oranges and yellows and browns that Kurt almost felt guilty wiping his hands on them.

He and Rachel generally got left to their own devices: Hiram was often out golfing or playing tennis with one of his rotating cadre of casual girlfriends, and LeRoy always seemed to have some case he was working on in his study. Occasionally when Hiram wasn’t out, Kurt could hear the two of them in the living room, laughing and talking in a strange language that Kurt had never heard before.

“What language is that?” Kurt asked the second or third time he heard it. He was sitting in the music room with Rachel, taking a break from singing to play Milton-Bradley’s Game of Life.

Rachel tilted her head and listened. “Yiddish. They talk in it sometimes when they don’t want people to understand what they’re saying.”

“Yiddish? Where do people speak that?”

“New Jersey.”

“Oh.” Kurt hadn’t realized that New Jersey was so exotic. Maybe he could visit it some day.

“Sometimes they speak Hebrew or French, but they’re not as good at those.”

“People from New Jersey?”

Rachel shook her head. “Oh, no. I meant Hiram and LeRoy.”

“Are they from New Jersey? Hiram and your dad?”

Rachel nodded.

Kurt was _definitely_ going to visit New Jersey someday.

 


	2. 1977

**1977**

“Do you miss your mom?” Kurt said one afternoon after they’d listened to the first side of Judy Garland’s _Alone_ twice in a row. Usually by now they’d be up dancing and Rachel would be teaching him the lyrics, but the overcast sky and the moody lyrics had put them both in a pensive mood. Neither of them had arisen from their first-listen-through position: lying on the floor next to each other, their heads at the midpoint between the stereo speakers.

Or maybe Kurt had been in a pensive mood already, before they first strains of “[By Myself](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6AVdws8mEo&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W)” had begun. It had been a week since he’d last seen his mother, and on her phone calls from the hospital each night she sounded increasingly tired and confused. She never seemed to be able to remember what Kurt had told her the day before.

She was fading away. It wouldn’t be long before she was completely gone.

Kurt kept staring at the white ceiling as he waited for Rachel to answer, trying to piece together an image of his mother back when she was healthy – and failing. He couldn’t remember what her smile looked like back when she had more energy, or the color of her eyes.

“Not really,” Rachel said. “I mean, sometimes I wish I had a mother that lived with me like everyone else.”

Kurt blinked heavily. He was such an easy crier; he hated that about himself.

Rachel grabbed his hand. “I’m sorry. I meant, like most kids.”

“I know,” he said, sniffing back the tears that were leaking into the back of his nose.

“But I never really lived with her. She moved away when I was a baby. It’s fun to visit her, but I’d miss dad and Hiram too much to stay with her forever.”

“Do you think – Do you think there’s such a thing as forever?”

Rachel was silent for a long time before speaking. “Daddy and Hiram say that everything has to end at some point, but that every time something ends, a new thing begins. So yeah, I do.”

Sometimes, when there was nothing good on TV, Kurt would flip to one of the empty channels and watch the black and white dots flicker on the screen. He’d pretend it was a cartoon of a snowstorm, and if he squinted he could see the characters inside the noise. Their forms would fade when he relaxed his eyes, but when he squinted again, he found new patterns – a butterfly, two children on the horizon in a field of poppies. He wondered if death was like that: you fade away and then regroup in a different form. Maybe his mother would come back as a flower after she died. She loved the smell of oriental lilies.

* * *

Rachel came to the funeral even though she’d never met Kurt’s mother. She sat in the pew next to him, looking very proper in a black sailor dress and patent-leather shoes. Kurt’s dad sat on his other side.

Years later, Kurt’s only memory of the funeral would be of staring down at Rachel’s shoes, and how the lily from the stained glass window reflected perfectly in the polished toes.

* * *

Kurt’s dad kept taking him to church regularly after the funeral. Kurt didn’t mind; it was an opportunity to dress up, and they’d been to the same church for holidays before his mother had died, so he didn’t have only sad associations with it.

Easter was weird, though. His dad forgot to buy any egg dye, so Kurt had to make do with boiling the few eggs they had in the fridge and coloring the results with crayons. Drawing on a curved surface was challenging, so he tried to keep the patterns simple: polka dots and wiggly lines of different colors, mostly. On the last egg, he tried to draw a white lily in memory of his mother, but it barely showed up against the egg shell.

At least his dad hadn’t forgotten to buy candy. Kurt’s Easter basket was full of Peeps and  those little foil-wrapped chocolate eggs that tasted more like sugar than chocolate (which Kurt loved about them). His dad let him eat a few with their breakfast of canned cinnamon rolls and the eggs Kurt had crayoned.

Kurt had received a white linen suit as a hand-me-down from his Cousin Albert a couple of years ago, and he’d finally managed to grow into it in time for Easter. He paired it with a pink oxford shirt and a blue ribbon discovered in one of his mother’s dresser drawers. He starched the ribbon and tied it in a bow around his neck with the ends hanging down in the manner of Colonel Sanders, whose dignified portrait never failed to impress Kurt whenever he and his dad went to the Kentucky Fried Chicken near their house.

The church was magnificent.  There were white lilies circling the pews and on the altar, the smell of them filling Kurt with almost as much contentment as if his mother had been alive again and sitting next to him. The women were wearing pretty hats and the men were in crisp suits and everything looked so nice and orderly, the way that Kurt liked it.

But the thing that Kurt liked most was the feeling in his chest when the soloist began the opening music: the voice was at just the right timbre to make Kurt’s ribs vibrate, the way they did when he was over at his Aunt Mildred’s and one of her cats would sit on top of him and purr. Kurt turned around in the pew to see where the voice was coming from: a young man, up in the choir loft, and so beautiful, loose auburn curls falling over his ears and onto his forehead, the edges of his hair absorbing the light from the stained-glass window like a rainbow-hued halo, his cheekbones high like an angel’s. Kurt’s mouth fell open. He’d never seen anything so magnificent in his life.

But it was his voice, mostly, that earned Kurt’s adoration. His voice and the expression on his face, like he was alone with the music and nothing could come between the two, like the words he was singing were the only words that mattered. Kurt was a leaf tossed about on the wind, riding the storm of the young man’s song.

He couldn’t imagine wanting to be anything else.

Kurt watched as the soloist sang his final long note. He kept watching as the organ notes faded in the stone walls of the sanctuary. He watched as the young man returned to his seat in the choir loft and sat down, his head disappearing behind the railing. Only then did Kurt turn back around to sit properly, the way he usually tried to.

But he couldn’t hold it all in. He thought he might burst from this strange emotion filling him. He had to let a bit of it out, like air from an overly inflated balloon. So he cupped his hands around his mouth and whispered into his dad’s ear, “He’s beautiful.”

His father smiled and patted Kurt’s knee. “His voice is really something, isn’t it?”

 _No,_ Kurt wanted to say. _It’s everything._

* * *


	3. 1978

**1978**

For his tenth birthday – and in celebration of the fact that he wouldn’t have to repeat his grade again like he did after his mom died – Kurt got a new bike. It wasn’t a hand-me-down from any of his cousins; it was absolutely new and all his own, with a banana seat and bright chrome fenders and pedals with little orange reflectors on them that caught the late spring sunlight. All it was missing were handlebar streamers and crepe paper woven in and out of the wheel spokes, but Kurt could take care of that later.

The next morning after breakfast, he hopped onto it and pedaled the quiet Sunday streets toward Rachel’s house. It was a beautiful day-before-Memorial-Day, half-cloudy with occasional sun breaks that felt like summer against his skin. The lilacs were in full bloom, and every block or so he’d catch a lungful of their scent and smile.

Kurt had never been to Rachel’s house at this time on a Sunday, but she’d mentioned often that they usually spent the morning in the kitchen making extravagant brunches and wouldn’t usually start eating until 11. Despite his repeated hints and his burning curiosity to know what rugelach tasted like fresh out of the oven, she’d never invited him.

He wasn’t consciously setting out to crash her brunch, but it _was_ his birthday and it would only be polite for them to invite him in to sample the dough. And of course it would be even _more_ polite of them to fully welcome him to their brunch, where he could finally find out what the mysterious bialys and blintzes and knishes that Rachel raved about actually _were._

He brought his bike around to the back of the house and leaned it against the garage. The back door to the kitchen was open, and through the screen he could hear three voices [singing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NUMGrad4bY&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W):

_You made me love you._  
_I didn't wanna do it, I didn't wanna do it._  
_You made me love you_  
_And all the time you knew it. I guess you always knew it._

He walked closer to the screen. LeRoy was at the stove, ladling batter onto a griddle, his face lit with laughter as Hiram and Rachel danced around him in their bathrobes, each with wooden spoons held up to their mouths like microphones.

_I must tell you what I'm feeling_  
_The very mention of your name_  
_Sends my heart reeling_  
_You know you made me love you_

Hiram bumped LeRoy with his hip and winked, offering the wooden spoon with one hand and reaching for the spatula with the other. It was LeRoy’s turn now to dance with Rachel; she giggled as he spun and dipped her around the galley.

_Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie, gimmie what I cry for_  
_You know you've got the brand of kisses_  
_That I'd die for_  
_You know you made me love you._

They were done singing now, but Kurt didn’t knock on the door frame. He felt like he was looking at a beautiful scene inside a snowglobe, and if he knocked on it, the glass would shatter.

Rachel collapsed into a chair, still giggling, and Hiram was smiling at LeRoy like he had a secret that he had a hard time keeping in. “ _Neshomeleh_ ,” he said, reaching for LeRoy’s hand and squeezing it.

Kurt didn’t understand what Hiram was saying, but he felt a squeeze in his heart, the way he felt sometimes when he could remember his mother’s face clearly. He’d never seen Rachel’s family together like this, close and comfortable the way that relatives should be.

Kurt stepped back from the door and leaned against the house’s siding, closing his eyes. He wished he had a brother to fill the empty space in his heart, the way that Hiram and LeRoy had brothers in each other.

There were stirrings in the kitchen – the sizzle of batter, the opening and closing of the oven, Rachel recounting details from the week. They eventually broke through Kurt’s reverie.

It occurred to Kurt that maybe it was a little weird to hover outside of people’s doors and spy on them, so he made a plan: he would slip over to the edge of the deck, hopping down to the ground and landing next to the rhododendron bush with silent composure of a cat, before turning around and clanking up the deck steps to herald his arrival, but alas – he was no cat. He made it as far as the edge of the deck and then went tumbling loudly into the shrub.

“What was that?” It was Hiram’s voice, sharp like an alarm.

“I’m sure it was nothing, _mon ange,_ ” clucked LeRoy.“You shouldn’t be so paranoid. It’s bad for your heart.”

“I’m paranoid now, am I? My paranoia is the only thing keeping everyone _in here_ safe from everyone _out there_.”

“Aba, calm down!” Rachel’s called out gently, authoritatively. “I’ll go check.”

There was the creak of the screen door opening, and then Rachel’s slippered footsteps across the deck. Kurt closed his eyes and tried to become invisible, but to no avail.

“Kurt? What are you doing in there?”

He looked up and squinted at her. “I came to show you my new bike, and – I don’t know. Taking the stairs seemed so pedestrian.”

Rachel helped Kurt untangle himself from the bush and took him into the house to get cleaned up. When they stepped inside, Hiram and LeRoy were standing in silence on opposite sides of the kitchen, prepping food at separate stations and not even looking at each other. Rachel dragged Kurt past them and up the stairs to the bathroom.

“I didn’t know you call Hiram ‘Abba,’” Kurt said as Rachel loosened bits of twigs from his hair.  “Isn’t that kind of a weird nickname?”

Her posture stiffened. “What’s so weird about it?”

Kurt winced as she was less-than-delicate with the next twig. “It’s just … I didn’t even know he liked them.”

“Liked who?” Rachel picked up the comb from the edge of her dresser and began to drag it through his hair.

“Abba, duh. Are you even listening to me?”

“Your hair,” she said, ripping through a knot with less finesse than he knew she was capable of, “is distracting.”

“Give me that.” Kurt snatched the comb from her hand. He studied himself in the mirror, then reached for a bottle of detangler that sat on the ledge of the bathtub. “I mean, do you guys even have any of their albums? Because if you do, you’ve been hiding them from me, and I don’t appreciate it.” He sprayed a cloud of detangler over his head and began to work the comb gently through the tips of his hair. “You know how much I like ‘[Take a Chance on Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-crgQGdpZR0&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W).’”

In the mirror, Rachel’s face went from cloudy to bright. “You’re right,” she said, patting his back. “I should have told you. Hiram _loves_ Abba. A _lot_. He owns _all_ of their albums. But he keeps them in his room because he’s … he’s _very_ possessive of them. But maybe –” She grinned so wide all her teeth showed. “Maybe I can convince him to let us listen to one of them. If we’re on our best behavior.”

“I’m always on my best behavior.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Just –” She lowered her voice to that same hushed tone she used when she was pretending to be Princess Leia leaving secret messages for Obi-Wan. “Don’t tell Hiram you heard me call him Abba. He’s kind of embarrassed about liking something so … unsophisticated.”

“Sure. Whatever floats your boat.” Rachel could be awfully weird sometimes.

LeRoy invited him to stay for brunch, but the carefree mood that had reigned in the kitchen before Kurt crashed into the rhododendron was gone now. Hiram sat stiffly through the whole meal, his back ramrod straight – and he barely spoke a word, even when LeRoy tried to prod him into singing his apparently famous rendition of “[The Man That Got Away](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzyPMRo8ZUQ&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W&index=14).” In fact, Kurt was pretty sure Hiram kicked LeRoy under the table then, because there was an unmistakable _thunk_ and LeRoy scrunched his face up like he was trying to poop.

On the plus side, Kurt got to eat fresh blintzes and warm rugelach, and afterward he and Rachel sang all the Sandy-Danny duets from _Grease_ while LeRoy accompanied them on the piano and Hiram shut himself in his room.

“Does Hiram hate me?” Kurt asked Rachel later as they went around the block, he on his new bicycle and she on her metal rolling skates.

“No. Why would you think that?”

“He was awfully grumpy at brunch.”

She was quiet for a moment, although her skates were not. They _click-clacked_ against the asphalt. “Well, he might have been upset about the rhododendron,” she finally offered. “He _is_ a little particular about the garden.”

“I only broke a couple of branches,” Kurt said in his defense, even though he could commiserate. There were a lot of things that he was particular about, too.

“I know. He’ll get over it.”

The next time Kurt went over to Rachel’s house, he brought a little potted rhododendron along with him. He’d asked his dad for an advance on his allowance so that he could make amends.

Hiram looked like he was about to cry when Kurt offered it to him. It wasn’t quite the response that Kurt had expected.

“You didn’t have to do that, Kurt.”

“But you were so upset about it. I wanted to make it up to you.”

Hiram blinked rapidly and crossed his arms. Kurt had the odd sense that there was something inside Hiram’s chest that was trying to burst out, but his folded arms were going to keep it in no matter what. “It wasn’t your fault. You’re just a boy. Sometimes I forget –” He blinked again, as fast as the numbers on Kurt’s bedside clock when he’d set his alarm. “Not everyone means harm.”

“I can plant it for you, too, if you want. Just tell me where.”

Hiram took a deep breath, keeping one arm across his chest as he reached out to pat Kurt on the head. “You’re the best kind of person there is, you know that? Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

* * *

Now that Kurt had a bike, he started going to the cemetery by himself sometimes. It was easier to talk about his mom with some things than it was with his dad, especially since she couldn’t hear.

He brought Rachel there sometimes, too. She surprised him the first time by pulling a smooth, round pebble from her pocket and setting it on top of the headstone as soon as they got there. It was an almost-translucent white with fissures of grey running through it, and it seemed to glow in the sun.

“That’s beautiful,” he said, laying the cluster of daylilies he’d picked on the way on the grass. “I think my mother would like it.”

He soon began leaving a stone for his mother whenever he visited. Flowers were lovely, but eventually they withered just like people and memories did. The stones stayed put through the seasons. He could always count on seeing them again.

*** * ***


	4. 1979

**1979**

In the summer between fourth and fifth grades, Kurt’s dad sent him to summer camp.

It wasn’t as terrible as Kurt expected. They slept in cabins instead of tents, and the counselors used matches to start the fires – learning to light one by rubbing two sticks together turned out to be an optional activity, which made it more fun. A girl in the neighboring cabin named Santana brought a transistor radio and the counselors let her play it sometimes at night for impromptu dances to the summer’s hits; there was always a lot of cheering when “[I Was Made For Dancing](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hihp_Jjdnsg&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W)” came on the airwaves.

Santana was horrible at her camp chores; whenever she was on dish duty, all the plates and glasses were coated in a disturbing film of grease at the next meal. So Kurt offered to do her chores if she’d share the bounty from the huge care packages full of candy that her parents would send her. M&Ms were his preferred form of payment.

“You can have any but the brown,” she’d say. “Those are my favorite.” It was a weird condition, since brown comprised two of the M&Ms’ five colors, but he went along with it.

“Um, what are you doing?” Santana interrupted on the fourth such transaction. He’d just removed the seventh green M&M from the bag and set it on his napkin on top of the picnic table. He was wearing green shorts that day and wanted all his M&Ms to match.

“Picking out my M&Ms, duh. You said I could have 20.”

“Yeah, but why are you only taking the green ones?”

He rolled his eyes. She could be so obtuse sometimes. “They match my shorts.”

“Oh my god, you’re so –” She rolled her eyes back. “Don’t you know that eating too many green M&Ms will make you gay?” There was disdain in her voice, like finding joy in life was to be avoided at all costs.

“Of course they do. Eating candy always puts me in a good mood.”

“Ugh. What cowtown are you from, Kurt? You don’t even know what gay means, do you?”

“Um, _duh_ Santana. It means ‘happy.’ You should have learned that by kindergarten.”

Santana swiped back the bag of M&Ms back and started picking through for oranges and yellows. “Kurt, when anyone _past_ kindergarten says ‘gay,’ it does _not_ mean ‘happy.’ It means ‘faggot.’”

He’d heard that word a few times from the guys working at his dad’s auto shop, but he could never figure out what it meant from context. The only other time he’d ever heard it was at camp when they were learning to build a fire. “You mean, like a bundle of wood?”

“Christ! No, like a fairy!”

“Oh.” Kurt _did_ know what that meant. Well, kind of. He knew that he got called it in school along with “sissy” and “girl” when he wore his best outfits. And he knew it was supposed to be an insult, even though the fairies in stories were always smarter and more powerful than the human beings. “Honestly, I don’t see what’s wrong with being magical and having wings.”

Santana rolled her eyes in distaste. “And I thought you were a smart kid. At least tell me you know what a homosexual is.”

Kurt shook his head.

“It means when two men kiss and rub their penises together.”

“Oh.” A strange heat flipped through his gut.

“Yeah,” Santana said. “So watch how many green M&Ms you eat, okay?”

* * *

There was a boy in Kurt’s cabin that became his best friend. Even though he’d only known Michael for a few weeks and the boy didn’t know any of Judy Garland’s songs outside of _The Wizard of Oz_ , their connection felt more weighty than what Kurt had with Rachel. It was hard to explain, and Kurt didn’t try to – not to himself or anyone else, _especially_ not Rachel. He mentioned Michael in one or two of his letters to her, but he didn’t tell her how they talked sometimes about moving to New York when they grew up and renting an apartment in Manhattan. Kurt would star in _Hair_ on Broadway, and Michael would be a fireman. He already had a good start on it by helping the counselors put the campfire out every evening.

A few nights before the session came to an end, Kurt and Michael snuck out of their cabin to go watch the stars by the lake. Kurt had picked the spot on one of his canoeing trips; it was on the opposite side of a little grove that blocked its view from the cabins even if you were using binoculars, but was accessible by foot if you knew how to use a compass and the North Star. Kurt had learned both over the past month.

“We’re here,” he said as they stepped out into the clearing. The lake was about 10 steps away, the water lap-lapping gently against the shore.

“It’s beautiful.” Michael took his hand. It wasn’t the first time they had touched hands. They’d pulled each other up over rocks and played silly hand-clapping games like “[Miss Suzy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Susie_had_a_steamboat)”and held onto each other for dear life during games of Red Rover. But this was different. It was private, and theirs, and there was no reason for it other than wanting to be closer.

Kurt couldn’t remember ever feeling this happy. “We’re kind of like brothers, aren’t we?”

It was dark, but there was enough light from the crescent moon to make out Michael’s features, the wonder as he drank in the trees and the water and the starlight. “I don’t know. I like you better than my brothers.”

“Really?”

Michael nodded. “I wish you lived near me.”

“Me, too.”

Michael stepped somehow even closer, and reached for Kurt’s other hand, too. They were completely linked, a full circle. Kurt looked down at their hands and up at Michael, his heart hammering in his throat, and Michael just smiled like it was the simplest thing in the world – and it occurred to Kurt that it was.

“I –” he started, but he didn’t finish, because Michael’s lips were on his cheek, so soft and gentle and it wasn’t like nobody had ever kissed him on the cheek before, but it _was._ No one had kissed him on the cheek in a way that felt like a brand burning down into his heart.

Kurt turned his head then, just slightly, because everything was perfect but it could be even more perfect and Michael understood, kissing him on the lips and for a second Kurt thought he might burst, it was so shockingly wonderful: Michael’s lips and the crumbled-cookie smell of him. He felt it down in his stomach the way he used to feel it when that baritone at church would sing.

They stayed at the lake until a few hours before sunrise – leaning into each other, kissing and hugging and watching the stars, making promise after promise they couldn’t possibly keep.

* * *

Kurt wondered sometimes, when he got a letter in the mail from Michael, if the things they did together made them gay. He hadn’t touched Michael’s penis, but sometimes when he was lying in bed at night and having trouble falling asleep, he’d distract himself by thinking about that night on the lake – about the feel of Michael’s skin and lips, about the way their hands fit together, and how he tasted like cookies and salt and spring leaves unfurling. And he’d find himself absentmindedly stroking himself down there, fingertips against skin that was almost as soft as Michael’s lips. It felt nice, and Kurt wasn’t sure how there could be anything wrong with it. Except there probably was.


	5. 1980

**1980**

Kurt had his first wet dream a month after his twelfth birthday. It was bewildering – one moment he was at a Leif Garrett concert with Rachel, Leif dancing in the aisles and Rachel shoving a rose in Kurt’s hand and screaming “Tell him! Tell him!” before pushing him out of the seat; and then Kurt was in the aisle, pressed up against Leif, dancing and kissing, Leif’s feathered blonde hair falling into Kurt’s face and his hips swaying and a warm feeling growing low in Kurt’s belly, spreading down to his thighs like a spark down a dynamite fuse –

And the next moment Kurt was wide awake, the front of his pajama shorts soaked through.

His dad had told him this might happen at some point, but he didn’t say anything about the kissing or the Leif Garrett or the way that Kurt would feel before he awoke – like he was back kissing Michael by the lake, but a hundred times more.

* * *

Two weeks before they entered sixth grade, Rachel showed up on Kurt’s front porch, red-faced and panting, her metal roller skates still strapped onto her feet. Strands of hair were coming loose from her pigtails, which were pinned in a halo atop her head in imitation of Princess Leia, and she was waving a rolled-up copy of _People_ magazine in her fist like a police baton.

“You know my dad doesn’t like you to climb the stairs in your skates –”

“Your phone’s been busy all afternoon!” Rachel blurted out with the kind of panic best reserved for a nuclear attack.

The sirens weren’t going, though, and the Emergency Broadcasting System hadn’t kicked in during Kurt’s afternoon viewing of _Fat Albert_ , so whatever Rachel was freaking out about couldn’t be that bad. “Of course the phone’s busy. Dad’s off from the shop today but you know how he still has to–”

“Read it!” She shoved the _People_ magazine in his face.

Kurt looked at the top of the page she’d opened it to. “[ _Xanadu_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNcUv1q2JAs&list=PL-cIAjOpypsE9uz6vZnYOucuRitY5PE7o) star Olivia Newton–”

“Ugh, I gave you the wrong article.” Rachel grabbed the magazine back from him and mumbling to herself as she flipped through its pages. “I mean, you should obviously still read the [_Xanadu_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m1UWSD-FaA&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W&index=55) article later because you’re the Sonny Malone to my Kira and I think it would help you get more in character for the skating routine I’ve been working on but  ... here!” She thrust the magazine back to Kurt, pointing to a small blurb toward the bottom of the page.

Before he could get the words “Orion Pictures announces Barbra Streisand's directorial debut,” out of his mouth, Rachel was clapping her hands and squealing. “Barbra’s going to direct a musical! And star in it! And it’s going to be rated PG, so we actually get to see it!”

Kurt dropped the magazine and hugged Rachel so hard he accidentally pulled her through the front door. Her skates left gouges on the entryway floor that resulted in Kurt’s allowance getting docked for the next month, but Rachel made it up to him by paying his way the next few times they went to the roller rink to practice being Sonny and Kira.

* * *


	6. 1981

**1981**

Kurt wasn’t sure how it happened, but several weeks into seventh grade, Rachel Berry was suddenly his girlfriend. Like, not his friend who was a girl, but the girl he was going steady with.

He found out when he was over at her house listening to Barbra Streisand’s _Guilty_ album for the mutually agreed-upon umpteenth time in a row. “Kurt,” Rachel said as “[The Love Inside](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5fpZxUWYKg&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W&index=5)” faded to a close. “Now that we’re officially going steady, I think you should ask me to the fall dance. Don’t you?”

The words shook him out of his reverie. The failed-love song always made him think nostalgically of Michael. “We’re going steady?” Kurt said.

Rachel bolted up from where she’d been lying down on the floor. “Well, of course. I’m allowed to go out with boys now that I’m in seventh grade. Who else would I go out with but you?”

She had a point. Since he’d first met her, he’d always thought they’d be perfect for each other when they were older.

He just hadn’t expected “older” to happen so soon.

“There’s not some other girl you have your eye on, is there?” she said.

Rocks dropped heavily in Kurt’s stomach. “Of course not, Rachel. You’re the only girl for me.”

* * *


	7. 1982

**1982**

For two years after bartering for M&Ms at summer camp, Kurt didn’t hear a repeat of the word “gay.” He began to wonder if Santana had made the whole thing up. Kids at his school mostly they stuck with the old standards of “fairy,” “girl” and “sissyboy." But then it appeared again out of nowhere, on a hot July afternoon when he was reading through the _The Toledo Blade_ :

> _‘Gay Plague’ an Epidemic_
> 
> _A cluster of cancers dubbed "gay plague" have reached epidemic proportions and doctors trying to control the outbreak say it is more baffling than Legionnaires' disease._
> 
> _"It is unprecedented in the history of American medicine," said Dr. James W. Curran, head of a Centers for Disease Control Task Force on the "immune deficiency syndrome," which is highly fatal among male homosexuals._
> 
> _The main form of it is a rare cancer — Kaposi's sarcoma — that causes purplish skin lesions on the legs and feet. Doctors at a San Francisco clinic dealing with homosexuals have uncovered four cases of rare Burkitt's lymphoma and three incidences of squamous carcinoma of the tongue since August. Four young homosexual men in San Francisco and one in Chicago were found to have diffuse, undifferentiated non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer that develops in infection-fighting cells called lymphocytes, the CDC said._
> 
> _Some 413 cases of the "gay plague" have been reported since 1981 and 155 of the victims are dead. Patients ranged in age from 15 to 52 years._

For the rest of the summer, Kurt read religiously through each page of the newspaper for another mention of the gay plague. He even combed the pages of the sports section, because sometimes the editors used little bits of news that no one cared about to fill blank spaces on the pages there. But nothing appeared.

And every day as he got dressed, he inspected his feet and legs for purple spots.

* * *

Kurt adopted little rituals to ward off bad luck. He’d always been fairly tidy and set in his ways, but now his standards became more exacting. When he’d do the dishes after dinner, everything had to be rinsed exactly three times or he started over again from the beginning. Before cracking an egg, he’d set it in a bowl of cold water to make sure it didn’t float, even if his dad had only brought it home from the grocery store the day before. If Kurt spilled anything in the kitchen, he’d toss a little of whatever it was over his shoulder for good measure – not just salt, but spices, flour, sugar, even milk – though he learned quickly that doing any of this in front of his dad resulted in immediate, loud expletives, despite the fact that Kurt always cleaned it up quickly. Kurt taught himself to wait until his father left the kitchen – and when that took too long, he’d sneak into the bathroom with a pinch of the offending ingredient and toss it backward into the sink, rinsing it down to hide the evidence of what he’d done.

He started thinking about death a lot, and symbols of death, and how to avoid both. After a couple visits to the neighborhood library to consult the encyclopedias about mourning customs throughout the world, he boxed up all his clothes that were mostly black, white, or purple – leaving him with no underwear outside a few pairs of Star Wars Underoos that barely fit him anymore, and one pair of emerald green dress socks.  

He used his saved-up allowance to buy a package of RIT dye and 10 pairs of light blue cotton socks in the ladies department of Gregg’s. “Don’t you have better things to spend your allowance on, Kurt?” his father asked as they walked toward the cash register. “There must be a Barbra Streisand album you don’t own yet.”

Kurt glared at him. His dad could be so obtuse sometimes.  “Light blue is the color of clear skies, Dad. Shouldn’t we all be hoping for more of those?”

When they got home that afternoon, Kurt took all his white underwear out of the box and brought it down to the laundry room to dye light blue like his socks.

*

In the fall, another short article appeared in the paper under the headline “Diseases that Plague Gays.” One line from it branded itself in Kurt’s brain:

> _A recent study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine has shown as many as 83 percent of homosexual men may have the potentially fatal immunodeficiency._

Kurt kept wearing his light blue every day, but it no longer offered him much hope.

*

“Why so sullen, kid?” Kurt’s father asked one afternoon in December, looking up from the engine of the AMC Gremlin he was working on.

His dad had started to ask him that question almost every day, and it was starting to piss him off. Why _not_ be sullen? His father may not know that Kurt was dying, but there was plenty of bad stuff to worry about besides that. They still hadn’t solved the Tylenol murders, and the Doomsday Clock was at 4 minutes to midnight. Any day now, Reagan or Andropov could wake up in a bad mood and set the whole world on fire.

Kurt dropped his backpack on the garage floor and slumped onto the stool his dad had waiting for him. “I’m not sullen. Just because I’m not smiling doesn’t mean I’m sullen.”

“Someone giving you a hard time at school?”

Kurt shrug. “Not really.”

“What do you mean, ‘not really’?”

“No, dad, no one’s giving me a hard time at school.” It wasn’t true, but the last thing his dad probably wanted to know was that Kurt walked the halls of James A. Garfield Middle School to daily greetings of “pussy” and “pansy” and “faggot,” or that he got shoved into lockers so often that his guidance counselor had given him a demonstration on how to extricate himself without the assistance of adults. (“You’ve got to learn to fend for yourself,” Mr. Lefkopoulous said. “Show ‘em you don’t care what they do to you and eventually they’ll stop bothering you – and stop wearing those girly socks, for Pete’s sake.”)

“Then what’s the problem?”

Kurt rolled his eyes. “There _is_ no problem.”

“Girl problems?”

 _As if._ “Rachel and I are as happy as always.”

Burt pulled a rag off the corner of the engine and wiped his hands. “I didn’t say Rachel. Maybe there’s some other girl. You’re 14. Everyone’s hormones go a little crazy at that age.”

“That’s gross, dad. I’m going to pretend you never said that.”

“Fine. But I want you to know you can come to me with any of your problems at any time. Even the gross ones. Okay?” His dad looked at Kurt and wouldn’t look away, even when Kurt looked everywhere _but_ his dad.

Kurt's eyes finally landed on a particularly grimy-looking light fixture dangling from the ceiling. “Do you realize how many dead bugs are in some of those lamp covers?” he said. “I could clean them if you gave me a ladder.”

“Kurt, I’m serious. You can tell me anything, okay?”

“Sure. Whatever.” Kurt jumped off the stool and went to the bathroom to change into his coveralls. It was a two-stall-and-urinal bathroom, but there was a lock on the main door and he latched it to keep anyone from coming in.

He leaned on the edge of the sink and cried for five minutes before he started dressing.

* * *

Later that afternoon in the garage office, as his father punched numbers into the adding machine and Kurt did his homework on the opposite side of the industrial-sized desk, he found himself saying, “Dad, there is something.” His voice started trembling as soon as he opened his mouth.

“What is it, buddy?” His dad reached across the desk, a worried look on his face. Kurt hated that look. He was a bad son for putting it there.

But he’d already started talking; if he tried to shrug it off with “never mind” now, his father wouldn’t let the issue go. So Kurt looked away from his dad’s worried eyes and plowed on. “There’s something wrong with me.”

“Why would you say that, Kurt?”

“I –” Kurt stared at the ceiling. The lights in the office were filthy, just like the ones in the main part of the garage. He wondered how he’d never noticed before. “Did you read that article in the newspaper – the one about the new cancer? The people who get it, they’re –” It wasn’t just his voice that was trembling now. His hands were, too, and his legs, and his feet were tap-tapping against the concrete floor. Kurt tried to stop them, but he couldn’t. It just made him shake harder. Kurt had never been in an earthquake, but he wondered if this was what one was like.

“You’re worried you have cancer?”

Kurt shook his head emphatically. “Not yet. But … soon. When I turn 15, maybe. Because, because – they’re like me, the people who get it. They’re, they’re –” But he couldn’t say anymore, because the stupid, uncontrollable, girlish pansy tears had stopped up his throat and they were pouring from his eyes, too, and he couldn’t stop crying, not even when his father leapt around the desk and fell to his knees beside Kurt, gripping his shoulders.

“No, Kurt. No. It’s not like that.”

“But I –” Kurt let out another choking sob and Burt pulled him into his shoulder, whispering _shush_ and _it’s okay_ and _I got you_ as the despair clawed deeper into Kurt’s body.

“Look, Kurt, I’ll take you to the doctor if you want. But there’s nothing wrong with you. Your mom –”

“But there is. There _is.”_ Another wail wracked Kurt’s body. He hated his body, he hated himself, he was so weak and worthless, he couldn’t even stop himself from _crying –_

Burt put a hand on either side of Kurt’s head and lifted it until they were looking eye to eye. “There is _not._ What happened with your mom – it was a fluke. You’re not gonna get it.”

“But you don’t understand. People like me –”

“Yes, I _do_ understand. I understand that when you get an idea in your head you won’t let go of it. But your mom’s cancer isn’t like eye color. You don’t inherit it.”

“But –”

His dad’s face went stern. “No ‘but’s, Kurt. We’re not talking about this anymore. We’ll get you a check-up ‘cause you’re due for one anyway, but that’s it. You need to stop thinking about this. Got it?”

Kurt didn’t say anything for a moment. He closed his eyes and started breathing deeply. He was going to learn to be strong if it killed him. Might as well. He was going to die anyway.

Something shifted deep in Kurt’s body, clicked like the cold metal shaft of a deadbolt. When he opened his eyes again, he didn’t blink or look away from his father. He stared into the soft green of his father’s eyes with steel resoluteness. “Got it.”

* * *


	8. 1983

**1983**

In April, a longer article about the gay cancer appeared in the newspaper under the title “‘Homosexual Plague’ Strikes New Victims.” Doctors had started to notice the disease among a few hemophiliacs, drug users and Haitians, and they had given it a more official-sounding name: acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. Scientists were still unsure what caused it, but it appeared to be a virus spread through “intimate contact” and blood. The death toll had risen to 400, almost all homosexuals.

Burt was at the shop, so Kurt didn’t have to worry about getting any uncomfortable questions as he lugged their ancient unabridged dictionary from under the coffee table and set it on the floor next to the open newspaper. Kurt had to look up “Haitian,” “hemophiliac,” “acquired,” and “intimate.” It was the last definition that worried him: “closely acquainted; familiar, close; having or creating an informal friendly atmosphere; involving very close connection; private and personal.”

Kurt read the article again. If the disease was a virus and it could only be gotten through intimate contact and blood, then it couldn’t invade Kurt’s body out of nowhere even if he was a homosexual. He had to know someone who had it, and probably be friends with them or sit next to them in class every day. And as far as he knew, he’d never met anyone who fit into the categories named by the newspaper – unless Michael was homosexual, and Kurt didn’t think he counted because no one would have ever _dared_ call him a faggot or a fairy.

Kurt almost cried with relief when it dawned on him that he wouldn’t have to inspect his feet for purple spots anymore – almost, but not quite. His eyes started to tear up, but he breathed deeply and wouldn’t let himself go.

He ended up with a headache, but at least he’d been strong.

* * *

That night as Kurt was trying to fall asleep, he realized something else, too. He had two choices in life:

Find another boy like him, fall in love, and risk almost-certain death.

Or stay alone and live.

He panicked for a few minutes, unable to decide which fate was worse. But then, like a crocus pushing through the snow, a beautiful solution blossomed in his brain:

Fall in love with a normal boy, and find a way to get him to love you back.

It had happened with Michael. It could happen again.

* * *

Kurt started wearing boys’ dark dress socks again on occasion, depending on what he’d read in the newspaper most recently and how reassuring it had been. But he was not planning to give up his light blue socks any time soon: frightening articles would pop up out of nowhere, saying children could get it from sharing a household with infected parents, or that medical professionals were at risk; ones that told of prisoners who refused to eat in their mess halls for fear of getting AIDS from utensils; and reports that sneezing and spit were potential sources of infection.

These were less-alarming articles, too. The doctors who treated AIDS patients agreed that most cases could be traced back to sexual contact, blood transfusions, contaminated hypodermic needles or – in the case of some infants – being born to a woman with AIDS. In September, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control published a report ruling out “casual contact, food, water, air, or environmental surfaces” as possible sources of transmission.

Kurt was somewhat comforted (he wore dark green socks the day after the latter article came out, not ready to risk navy or black, but feeling reassured enough that light blue wasn’t necessary) but still bewildered. He couldn’t figure out how so many gay men were ending up with AIDS when gay men don’t have sex.

Because Kurt knew what sex was: his father had explained it to him when he was 10, and he’d just had a refresher that spring during the weeklong sex-ed unit in boys’ gym. Sex was when a man put his penis in a woman’s vagina and ejaculated, and it was supposed to be romantic (even if his own abnormal feelings made the idea seem distasteful). Why would gay men be having sex if they only fell in love with other men?

Kurt had heard of blowjobs and he’d fantasized about (as Santana had so eloquently put it) rubbing his penis against another boy’s. But he didn’t think of those things as sex. He grouped them with the long list of “not sex” things he wasn’t supposed to want with boys, like kissing and necking and holding hands and getting married and snuggling on the couch.

He got out the dictionary again, and it confirmed what he already knew:

  * **_sexual_** _– relating to sex_
  * **_sex_** _– sexual activity, specifically sexual intercourse_
  * **_intercourse_** _– also referring to **sexual intercourse** : sexual contact between individuals involving penetration, specifically the insertion of a man's erect penis into a woman's vagina, typically culminating in orgasm and the ejaculation of semen_



It wasn’t until he picked up an old copy of _Newsweek_ that someone had left in the waiting room of his Dad’s shop that Kurt realized the dictionary and his father may not have told him everything there was to know about sex. The cover had a picture of a blood vial labeled “AIDS” under the headline “EPIDEMIC.” When none of the customers were looking, he shoved it up the front of his shirt like a porno mag and bolted all the way home.

Even though his father wasn’t due to finish up at the shop for a couple of hours, Kurt shut the door to his room and propped his vanity chair under the door handle to prevent any unannounced intrusions. He sprawled on the bed, flipped the magazine open and, two pages in, found yet another confounding mention that gay men were apparently getting AIDS through sex. But then the article, unlike anything Kurt had ever read in a newspaper, explained what it meant by that: “large amounts of sperm ... might cause the problem if it were absorbed by the body during frequent oral or anal intercourse.”

Kurt turned bright red, slapped the magazine shut and shoved it inside one of his old issues of _GQ_ , where he knew his dad would never look.

* * *

Kurt entered McKinley High School that fall and was in love with Finn Hudson by the end of September.

It was Finn’s second year as a freshman, but no one in the school seemed to hold that against him. He was the star of the junior varsity football team, and the upperclassmen actually looked him in the eye when he’d walked by them in the hallways. The teachers doted on him and girls snuck love notes into his locker and all the guys wanted to be his best friend – not just because he was strong and tall and handsome, but also because he was nice to everybody.

The third time that his best friend Puck cornered Kurt by the dumpsters and tried to drop his faggy ass in the trash where it belonged, Finn pulled Puck back and told him he needed to chill the fuck out unless he wanted to get suspended again. “Sorry, dude,” Finn muttered to Kurt as he pulled Puck away. “He’s a type-H personality.”

Kurt managed to untangle his tongue enough to ask, “Type H?”

“Yeah,” Finn said. “Like they talk about in health class. I think it stands for ‘heinous’ or something.”

Kurt decided not to correct Finn and tell him that the personality they talked about in health class was probably “type A,” not “type H” – partly because that was an absolutely adorable error, and also because he didn’t want to make Finn feel stupid in front of Puck. Instead he blurted out a cheerful “thank you” and resisted the urge to skip as he headed back into the school.  

Finn was reassigned to Kurt’s freshman history class in early October. From Columbus Day to a week past Halloween, Finn sat in the desk next to him – and it was the worst that Kurt did in history class all year.  But on the plus side, Kurt was also the recipient of several tightly folded notes from Finn. The fact that they were never personal and almost always requests to look over Finn’s spellings of proper nouns like “Lincoln” and “Gettysburg” was of little consequence, as was the fact that Finn had a cute blonde cheerleader girlfriend by the name of Quinn Fabray; Kurt would answer on a clean sheet of looseleaf and slip the original note into his pocket to be stashed in his box of mementos at home, next to his mother’s old perfume bottle and a lanyard that Michael had given him on the last day of camp.  

To give him more to talk about with Finn, Kurt started watching Sunday afternoon football with his dad and sometimes Monday night football, too, asking lots of questions about what the quarterback was doing and sometimes other questions, too. His newfound interest seemed to please Burt.

Perhaps surprisingly, Kurt’s crush didn’t interfere with his relationship with Rachel. He still kissed her on the cheek upon seeing her first thing in the morning, and they still ate lunch together every day and walked down the school corridors holding hands. They went to the JV football game almost every week – Rachel didn’t need to know that Kurt’s only reason for going was so he could spend more time watching Finn.

At the end of each of their weekly dates, Kurt would say goodbye to her with a soft kiss on the lips. It felt good. Not like fire, but like warm sunlight in winter. And sunlight is much less dangerous than flame.

* * *

Kurt and Rachel joined the drama club. To both their surprise, there were no auditions. Instead, during the first meeting, Mr. Ryerson had the kids stand shoulder-to-shoulder like soldiers at drill. He went down the line, stopping in front of each student long enough to say, “You’ll do” or “Get out.”

“Um, excuse me, Mr. Ryerson, but wouldn’t it help if you saw us perform first?” Rachel piped up when he was up to her.

“What’s your name, little girl?”

Kurt turned to watch Rachel compose her face. She did not take well to being called ‘little girl’ even though she was, in fact, rather short. “Rachel Barbra Berry, Mr. Ryerson.”

“Well, Rachel. Have you ever been to a casting call?”

She shook her head. “No, sir. I haven’t.”

“This is how they work. You would know that if you’d tried out for [_Annie_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0bOH8ABpco&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W&index=41).” Mr. Ryerson eyed her disdainfully. “Not that you would have gotten in, anyway. You’re the right height for the part, but not the right color.”

Rachel’s eyes went momentarily wide, but then she swallowed hard and smiled. “Well, thank you for your helpful feedback, Mr. Ryerson. I’m already learning so much.”

“That’s more like it. You’re in, but watch the guff.”

By the time Mr Ryerson was through, about 40 kids were left – half the girls and all the boys remained.

Mr. Ryerson’s teaching methods were, well, odd at best. They mostly consisted of him performing a monologue or musical number and having the students critique it. It only took a couple of these rounds for the students to learn that “critique” meant “praise”; anyone who dared offer constructive feedback was subjected to a five-minute tirade and several props flung squarely toward their head.

Attrition was inevitable. The boys, Kurt noticed, were leaving at an especially rapid pace. By the end of September, he was one of only four left.

“I’m not sure drama club is really going to help us advance our careers,” Kurt said one afternoon at Rachel’s as they took a break from choreographing new moves to the [_Flashdance_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILWSp0m9G2U&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W&index=43) soundtrack. “He hasn’t even given us anything to practice yet.”

“True, but he took me aside yesterday and told me that if we made it through 10 of his performances in a row without any backtalk, he would start to let us do our own work. We’re up to nine.”

“Your hope springs eternal, doesn’t it?”

“Mr. Ryerson’s teaching methods are a little unconventional, but I think they might be the best possible preparation for the dog-eat-dog world of showbiz. Stick with it a little longer, Kurt.”

So he did. The students praised him profusely for his tenth performance, and Mr. Ryerson in turn condescended to assigning them _A Midsummer Night’s Dream._ “Allocate the parts amongst yourselves, and make sure you’ve got full props and costumes. I want it done in a week. Flub any lines and I’ll personally go into each of your homes and euthanize your beloved pets. If you can’t pull off Shakespeare in seven days, you certainly can’t be entrusted with the care and feeding of another living being.”

Rachel gave Kurt a worried look. “He wouldn’t really do that, would he?”

“Why are you worried? You don’t have any pets.”

“That's not true. I've had a pet rock since I was six.”

Kurt got the part of Puck, which struck him as slightly ironic considering his animosity toward the bully who liked to throw him in dumpsters. But he’d developed a liking for the character long before meeting Noah Puckerman – ever since seeing the [1935 movie](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjSg2BVeCMs&list=PL-cIAjOpypsE9uz6vZnYOucuRitY5PE7o) version on UHF and finding out that Puck was a fairy.

Because of the shortage of boys, Kurt would also be playing Lysander in the scenes where Puck wasn’t present. And he had volunteered to take charge of costuming with a girl named Tina Cohen-Chang.

Somehow (mostly by skipping sleep and homework and drinking lots of Coke), the drama club managed to pull a production together for their one-person audience of Mr. Ryerson. It wasn’t the best production that the world had ever seen, but they did manage not to flub any of their lines, thanks to several of them wearing Walkmans with tapes of the entire script.

Mr. Ryerson clapped stoically when it was done. “And I was so looking forward to helping your pets shake off this mortal coil,” was his only feedback. “Oh, well. I’m sure I’ll have another opportunity.”

Most of the kids headed straight to the bathrooms to change into their street clothes, but Kurt stayed behind. The backstage was littered with costume pieces that had been doffed between scenes, and he didn’t want any of them lost. He was going to take them home and make slides for his portfolio in case he ever decided to pursue costuming further.

Footsteps crossed the stage toward him. “Hey Tina, is that you?” he called out. “I’m picking up the costumes. There’s a separate pile of the ones you made in case –”

A face peered from the side curtains. It wasn’t Tina. It was Mr. Ryerson.

Kurt’s spine went cold as he registered the expression on his teacher’s face. It was … kind, and appeasing. It wasn’t at all like the Mr. Ryerson Kurt knew. Kurt was reminded of a painting from an art history book at Rachel’s house: a snake with the face of a human, curled around the Tree of Knowledge and beckoning Eve in the Garden of Eden.

“You make a very good fairy,” Mr. Ryerson said, stepping toward him.

Kurt gritted his teeth. “Thank you, sir.”

“What’s your name again?” Mr. Ryerson smiled, his voice laden with the kind of charm Kurt had only heard used at cocktail parties in black-and-white movies.

“Kurt Hummel.”

“Hummel? Like the porcelain figurines? How appropriate. Your skin looks like white porcelain.” Mr. Ryerson stepped closer, reached toward Kurt – and Kurt told his feet to step back but they wouldn’t move. He had turned into a little porcelain statue, couldn’t even blink, and his heart stopped beating and everything was cold. Mr. Ryerson dragged the tip of his forefinger along Kurt’s jaw. “Smooth like porcelain, too. You haven’t started growing facial hair yet, have you? Boys always look their best right before their facial hair comes in, if you ask me. Have you considered modeling?” His finger was still on Kurt’s face, warm and smooth like a leech.

Kurt didn’t answer. His eyes went out of focus until Mr. Ryerson became nothing but a blur.

“C’mon. I know you can talk. I’ve just seen you perform. Do you need me to loosen that tongue of yours?” He said it flirtatiously, almost as if he had convinced that this was a seduction.

Kurt’s lips moved. “No.”

“Well, you should consider it. I do oil paintings, you know, and a model like you is hard to come by. You have a very expressive body.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Do.” Mr. Ryerson dropped his hand from Kurt’s face and stepped back -- the breath that entered Kurt’s lungs felt like his first in years. “It’s a very professional arrangement, of course. I pay three times the minimum wage, plus all the weed you care to smoke. We’d keep it between ourselves of course. Wouldn’t want to make the other students jealous.” He moved toward Kurt again, cupping his hand around the side of his neck, dragging his thumb back and forth along Kurt's jaw. “A boy like you needs a man to remind him how pretty he is, doesn’t he?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don't need to be afraid to tell me. I know how hard it can be.”

"I really don't –"

"And you are. Your eyes especially. So blue, like pieces of topaz –"

“And yours are like to shiny mouse turds.”

Mr. Ryerson’s usual face returned, and he dropped his hand like it had been burned. “Well, well. Look what a person gets these days for trying to be a friend. Don't you think you're a little young to be such a bitter old queen already?”

"No, I don't."

"Suit yourself. But don't expect to find what you need without my help. It's a dangerous world for a little faggot like you to explore all alone." He turned away and marched off.

Kurt stood there, no longer frozen. Every part of him was shaking, from his teeth to the toes twitching inside his stage shoes. He shook all the way home and kept shaking until he had washed his face three times and showered twice, removing every trace of Mr. Ryersons fingertips from his skin.

He stopped going to drama club after that. “But Kurt,” Rachel whined when he told her the following Monday that he would not be accompanying her to the afternoon’s rehearsal, “I need you. We’re in this together.”

“If we’re in this together, quit with me. We can do our own plays.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Kurt. We don’t have the resources to put on a full production. I know Mr. Ryerson is … challenging, but he’s the only drama coach this school has.”

Kurt straightened his spine. “He’s not ‘challenging,’ Rachel. He’s a psychopath. I’m not going back. End of discussion.”

“I never knew you were such a quitter, Kurt.” She spun around and stomped down the corridor toward the theater.

The words stung, but he wasn’t going to defend himself. He couldn't – not without telling Rachel what had happened. And that would be a disaster. Rachel would make a federal case out of it, storming into the principal's office and yelling at the top of her lungs. The principal would probably laugh in her face, Kurt would get suspended for attempting to seduce a teacher, and it would spread the whole student body. Maybe they'd make fun of Mr. Ryerson a little, but mostly they'd talk about Kurt and call him a fag and beat him up for blaming his weakness on a teacher. Kurt was young, but he wasn’t an idiot. He knew how the world worked.

* * *

“You thinking of trying out for freshman football?” Kurt’s dad asked as they sat in the living room together, watching the halftime playbacks from the Browns versus Bengals game.

Kurt wasn’t, but he’d found that humoring his father helped keep him off his back. “Maybe.” He turned back toward the TV and tossed another piece of popcorn in his mouth.

“And what about choir? You thinking about trying out for that? When you were a kid you told me you were going to be a Broadway star.”

Kurt rolled his eyes, congratulating himself internally about how good he was getting at pretending he didn’t care about things. “No one wants to hear me sing. You can barely tell that my voice broke. I sing like a girl.”

“So do the BeeGees, and everyone loves them.”

His father could be so obtuse sometimes. “ _No one_ love the BeeGees, Dad. Disco is dead.”

“Well, I think you have a great voice, Kurt.”

“You’re in the minority.” Kurt clutched the edges of the popcorn bowl. His father was clearly on some weird parenting kick. He wondered if he could put a stop to it by spilling the popcorn on the floor. He wasn’t sure how he’d make it look natural, though.

“Well, I think you should do some sort of extracurricular now that you’ve dropped theater. It’s good for you. It’ll help you make friends.”

 _Because I’m not popular enough for you, am I?_ Who did his father think he was, trying to step in and fix Kurt’s life _now_ , when he’d made it clear last year in the garage that he didn’t really want to know the truth of it?  But Kurt would control himself. He would not cry or shout or shake. He would just do everything in his power to piss his father off. “Yeah, like being a drama fag really raised my coolness quotient in the school.”

“Watch your language, Kurt.”

Kurt rolled his eyes again. He needed to add some other unconcerned expressions to his repertoire, but he’d work on that later. “Dad, that’s just what they’re called. You’ve got the jocks and the preppies and the bamas and geeks, and then you’ve got the drama fags. It doesn’t have anything to do with being an _actual_ fag … Well, except for Mr. Ryerson,” Kurt added coolly. “He’s a total homo. Bet you by the end of the year he comes down with AIDS and gets fired. The whole school will probably have to go into quarantine.”

His father’s response was predictably scandalized. “Do you talk in front of Rachel that way?”

Kurt kept his expression as still as a mask’s. “What does Rachel have to do with it?”

“I just don’t think you should be badmouthing your teachers, is all. Even if the guy _is_ a homosexual, it’s not like he’s gonna hit on you. You’re kind of shooting yourself in the foot to drop the club over that.”

 _Oh, if only you knew. But you don’t want to know, do you?_ Kurt clenched his jaw. “You’re not the one who has to sit there and watch him be all faggy. It’s disgusting.”  

“Go to your room.”

Kurt was tempted to ask if he was being punished for calling his teacher a fag, or for calling him a homosexual. But he didn’t trust his father to understand the difference. So instead he sighed heavily, kicked his feet up on the coffee table, and said, “I don’t feel like it.”

And finally, his father snapped. “Go to your room,” Burt shouted, his arms shaking as he lunged up from the couch, standing over Kurt and pointing agitatedly toward the stairs. “Now. Or I promise you, we’ll both regret it.”

Kurt didn’t shout. He didn’t shake. He was stronger than his father now. He stood up from the couch, taking the bowl of popcorn with him, and quietly side-stepped around his dad. “Fine. But just so we’re clear, I hope Mr. Ryerson and everyone likes him gets AIDS and burns in hell.”

“You don’t believe in hell.”

Kurt eyed his father coldly. “I believe in it for sickos like him.”

Up in his room, Kurt didn’t slam the door. He closed it carefully, gently; walked calmly over to his stereo; and cranked “[Under Pressure](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtrEN-YKLBM&index=41&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W)” to top volume.

* * *

“We should cool down,” Kurt murmured one Friday night when Rachel had tried for the fifth time in 20 minutes to stick her tongue in his mouth. The times that both her dad and uncle were out were the worst. Neither of them were due to be back for at least a couple of hours, and Rachel seemed to think that meant she and Kurt should do nothing but roll around on the couch all evening.

“It’s okay.” She leaned over to nip at his earlobe, then drew her hand up the inside of his thigh. “I don’t want to cool down. I want to give myself to you.”

Kurt rolled out from under her so fast that he fell _thunk!_ onto the floor.

“Kurt!” She clambered after him – her hands everywhere, inspecting him for injuries. He swatted them away. “Kurt! Why are you freaking out? We’ve been going out for two years. We’ve been talking about our wedding since fourth grade. Don’t you think it’s about time?”

Kurt closed his eyes and reminded himself that he wasn’t a pansy. He was not going to panic. “I don’t want to get you pregnant,” he said soberly.

“Oh, darling, that’s so sweet.” She reached for her hand. He let her take it. “But it’s okay. I got a diaphragm.”

“You what?!” As quick as shot he was on his feet, his hand covering his mouth in horror. So much for not panicking. “Didn’t you think I might want to talk about this first?”

She shrugged. “No. You’re a boy. You’re 15. What is there to talk about?”

“Rachel Barbra Berry! I am not your piece of meat.”

“Take a chill pill, Kurt.” Rachel stood up with a huff. “Every other guy your age is begging for a girlfriend who will put out.”

“‘Put out’? Seriously? Is that your idea of romancing me?”

“You shouldn’t need romancing. I have a vagina.”

Kurt felt the blood drain from his face. If any had been in his cock, it drained from there, too. The food and the two glasses of wine Rachel had given him earlier that night spun around like clothing on the rinse cycle.

There was only one thing to do. Kurt sprinted toward the stairs and booked up them two at a time, his Doc Martens pounding against the treads.

“Where are you going?”

“Home!”

He heard her coming after him, a delicate little run, one step at a time. But by the time she caught up to him, he was already in the entryway, throwing on his coat and scarf. She grabbed at his sleeve. “Your dad’s not picking you up until 10!”

He jerked away. The last thing he needed at the moment was her touch. “I’ll walk.”

And with that, he was outside, slamming the door so hard behind him that the house shook.

*

Kurt called the next day to apologize.

“I just don’t understand, Kurt. Don’t you think I’m pretty?”

“Of course I think you’re pretty, Rachel. You’re beautiful.”

“But –”

“But what?”

“You never touch my breasts.”

Kurt took a deep breath.  “I’m trying to respect you, Rachel.”

“I don’t need to you respect me. I need you to love me.”

“Rachel, that’s not fair. You know I love you.”

“Then why won’t you have sex with me?”

“I’m just – I’m not ready, Rachel. Diaphragms don’t always work. I’m too young to be a father.”

“I could take the pill. It’s more effective.”

“Rachel.”

“What?”

“I love you. But I’m not having … I’m not ready to have sex with you.”

“Will you at least touch my breasts? Unless,” she sniffled, “you don’t like them.”

“Rachel, you have perfectly nice breasts. I just – I didn’t know how important this was to you.”

“It is.”

“Okay.”

* * *

Kurt tried. He really did. He touched Rachel’s breasts over her sweater, and then under her sweater, feigning a more-than-aesthetic interest in her Victoria’s Secret bras. He let her lick past the seam of his lips and – it wasn’t terrible. She tasted fine – usually like Close-Up toothpaste, sometimes like whatever they’d just been snacking on together. If she had her hair braided so that it wasn’t falling into his face, and if he ignored her lack of chin stubble and the fact that she always smelled like Love’s Baby Soft, he could enjoy the kissing. When he closed his eyes and just concentrated on the physical sensations – skin against skin, her mouth teasing at his earlobe and sucking bruises onto his neck – it started to feel good. When he thought of Finn sitting next to him in history class, leaning close enough that Kurt could smell his Brut 33, it felt better. Sometimes he’d start to get hard, and Rachel would notice and grind down on him and then it felt incredible and he’d think, _I can do this. I can do this._

But something always happened. Rachel would whimper in her girlish voice or press her breasts against him or exude that strange scent of a girl who’s turned on, and everything would collapse. He’d try to hold on and breathe through it – _Rachel is beautiful, I love Rachel, if I love Rachel then I can love her body too_ – but despite his best efforts his body would tighten up and his mouth would close and Rachel would sigh and roll away.

“Whew, I think we should cool down, don’t you?” she’d say with a kiss to his cheek, and he felt so grateful it was hard not to cry.

* * *

After three years of waiting, Kurt and Rachel finally got the chance to see Barbra Streisand’s [_Yentl_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUUILOhBRCw&list=PL-cIAjOpypsE9uz6vZnYOucuRitY5PE7o&index=14) the day after Christmas. They took the bus to a matinee at the new Lima Multiplex, a grand structure on the edge of town with four separate movie theaters inside. It was the biggest theater either of them had ever seen.

They knew a little of what to expect when the room darkened and the screen went bright. They’d been reading the reviews for weeks: Set in early 1900s Poland, _Yentl_ is the story of a young Jewish woman who is her father’s only child. An expert in Jewish law, he lacks a son to pass his knowledge to. Bypassing restrictions on teaching girls, he secretly instructs Yentl in the law. But after he dies, Yentl has no way to continue her studies. She disguises herself as a young man and travels to another town to attend the religious school there. She befriends a fellow student named Avigdor, who soon adopts her as a younger brother. She, on the other hand, falls in love with Avigdor. But of course she can’t tell him because he believes she’s a man, and a man loving another man is sin; and if he finds out she’s a woman, she’ll be separated from the studying she also loves.

On its surface, that was the plot of the movie. But to Kurt it was the story of a boy falling in love with another boy, and being afraid to tell him.

Every love song reminded him of Finn, and how much his own body ached when Finn was near, how his hands felt empty because they weren’t holding him. He tried not to cry, but couldn’t stop himself; and maybe it was okay, because Rachel was crying too, holding onto his hand and passing him napkin after napkin from the pile in her lap.

But then Yentl came out to Avigdor and Kurt let out a wracking sob that must have echoed through the entire theater – which normally would have been humiliating, but there was hardly anyone in it, and the people who were would probably think it was Rachel sobbing, anyway. She held his hand tighter and leaned her forehead against his warm, sticky cheek and told him to take a deep breath. He did, and the sobbing stopped, but the tears kept going until the credits were halfway through.

When the music faded and the theater lights came back on, he braced himself for her usual post-movie rapid deconstruction of musical and acting highlights – but she didn’t. He blinked and looked at her. She was crying, too.

She gave him a small smile and leaned across the armrest and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “No matter what happens,” she said, “you’ll always be my best friend.”

* * *

Rachel called Kurt the next day and asked him to go for a walk.

He told her that was a terrible idea; the cold made his nose turn bluish-pink like an alcoholic’s, and she’d never want to kiss him again. “Couldn’t we go to Kewpee Hamburger instead?”

“No,” Rachel said. “Those baby dolls on the wall creep me out. Also, I want to have a private conversation.”

Kurt was silent for a moment. “Why? Are you going to break up with me?”

“As if,” she said. “I just – I have something I want to talk about. Also, I want to see you in that scarf your Aunt Mildred sent you from Milan for Christmas. It looks really dope on you.”

They met at the cemetery where his mother was buried. That’s where they often went for their more serious talks, because it was big and quiet and none of the other kids from school were ever there during the day.  They started their walk in the usual way, by each leaving a small rock on his mother’s headstone.

Rachel spent longer than usual looking down at the grave after putting down her rock.

“Are you praying?” Kurt said.

“Not exactly.”

“You’re not contemplating singing ‘Papa Can You Hear Me’ to my mother’s grave, are you? Because if anyone does that, it should be me.”

She shook her head and looked up. There was something sad and removed about her eyes. “I was just thinking,” she said.

He offered his elbow to her as they started their walk. “You’re awfully quiet for someone who usually has so much to say.”

“Kurt,” she said, “what was it about the movie that made you cry?”

Kurt stiffened, but they kept walking. “I kept thinking how unjust it was that Mandy Patinkin didn’t get any lines to sing.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “I’m sure.”

“Isn’t that why you were crying?”

“No. I was crying because –” Rachel swallowed hard. “I was crying because it reminded me of my parents.”

“Your mother is a cross-dressing yeshiva student? You always told me she was a vocal coach and off-Broadway star in New York.”

Rachel sighed. “She _is._ But I wasn’t talking about my mother. I was talking about – about LeRoy and Hiram.”

Suddenly he knew what she was trying to say. That everything he had hoped and wished and suspected about them for years was true – but instead of relief he felt like someone had reached a hand inside his body and was twisting his stomach around. “Um … but Hiram is your uncle.”

“No. I mean, he is. But he’s not. Do you remember –” She took a deep breath. “Do you remember that time you overheard me call him ‘aba’? I think it was right after your tenth birthday.”

“Vaguely.”

“I told you that I called him that because he’s a really big ABBA fan. But he’s not. He actually can’t _stand_ them – which is really odd, I know, I mean who hates ABBA –?”

“Your point?” He shouldn’t have snapped. It made no sense to snap. But terror was flooding his brain. His heart was pounding and the only think that kept him from vomiting was that it would be beyond gauche to puke on someone’s grave.

“‘Aba’ means ‘dad’ in Hebrew. It’s what – it’s what I’ve always called him in private.”

“Okay, so you think of Hiram like a father. That’s not a huge shocker, Rachel. He’s helped raise you. I still don’t see what that has to do with _Yentl_.”

“Really?” she said. “You don’t?”

Kurt shook his head. He couldn’t see. He wouldn’t see – wouldn’t see them and wouldn’t see himself because what next, then?

“Let’s just say that _Yentl_ reminded me of Hiram and LeRoy for the same reason that it reminded you of yourself.”

He was so, so cold. His arms and legs started to tremble. “I don’t understand what you mean. And I’m not sure I want to.”

She let go of his arm and faced him. “You’ve fallen in love with a boy, haven’t you? Just like – just like Hiram and LeRoy did when they met each other at Rutgers.”

Kurt didn’t answer the question. He stared at her fixedly. The air was freezing and his body was freezing and his face should freeze, too, solid and unmoving like a sheet of ice – but no. It betrayed him. It cracked and melted, and he let out a sob so loud his throat burned with it.

“Oh, honey.” Rachel flung her arms around him and pulled him close, pressing her face into his neck. “It’s okay. Everything will be okay.”

* * *

Rachel took Kurt home and left him in the kitchen to talk to her dads while she went off to her dance practice.

They told him the true story: how they met at Rutgers, joined the same fraternity and fell in love. How it was so easy to be in love but so hard to stay together. They broke each other’s hearts countless times; the final straw was when LeRoy proposed to a female cousin of Hiram’s instead of Hiram himself.

Hiram pulled up stakes and moved to San Francisco before the wedding took place. It should have been wonderful. It was, at least, a distraction. He got involved with the homophile movement (“The what?” Kurt said; “Gay liberation,” Hiram said; Kurt hadn’t heard of that, either), and he found so many people who were like him. But none of them were LeRoy.

Every year before Yom Kippur, LeRoy wrote Hiram a letter asking for his forgiveness. And every year Hiram threw the letter away without reading it. He’d been taught always to forgive a sincere asker, and he wasn’t ready to do it yet. He might not ever be.

He managed to avoid LeRoy for a few years, and it became easier when the Berries moved to Ohio. But then, in 1970, Hiram and LeRoy both ended up back in Hoboken for a family event.

Shelby – Hiram’s cousin and LeRoy’s wife – had seen them together before. But she had been much younger then, only a year out of high school and so naive about love and about the man she adored. She hardly knew LeRoy at all.

But she knew LeRoy now. And when she saw LeRoy look at Hiram after so many years, she knew. “How long have you been in love with him?” she asked that night after putting the baby to bed.

LeRoy pretended not to understand the question at first, but it was a losing battle. So he told her.

She asked for a divorce. Their little girl was 9 months old.

LeRoy went back to Ohio with the baby. Shelby moved to New York. Hiram tried to hold onto his anger, but it was useless. He packed up everything he owned and moved to Ohio. It was no San Francisco, but it was where he needed to be.

It was hard for Kurt to imagine leaving San Francisco for Lima. Even with AIDS, most days it seemed a better place to live than here.

“Do you still know anyone in San Francisco?” Kurt said.

Hiram shook his head. “Most of them are dead now.”

* * *


	9. 1984

**1984**

Rachel and Kurt didn’t break up. Well, not exactly. They still walked down the school corridors hand in hand, and Rachel still greeted Kurt with a kiss to the cheek most mornings, and they went out on weekly dates. Kurt’s dad and most of McKinley High School were none the wiser.

They stopped making out, of course, but they’d never done that in public, so it wasn’t a change that would be easy for anyone else to catch onto. And they became closer in some ways. In March, Rachel divulged a crush on Finn Hudson that began the second week of school, when Quinn Fabray knocked Rachel’s Trapper Keeper out of her arms and the contents went flying all over the corridor. Finn helped her pick everything up even though it made him late for class.

“He is pretty chivalrous,” Kurt said, stifling the urge to sigh dreamily.

“You’re not mad? That I noticed him even though – I never would have cheated on you, Kurt. I want you to know that.”

He reached under the cafeteria table and squeezed her hand. “We’re teenagers. We notice that people are cute even when it’s extremely inconvenient.”

“Oh?” A devilish grin spread across her face. “And who have you inconveniently noticed?”

Kurt gave her a warning look. “We are not talking about that here.”

She nudged him under the table. “So you _do_ like someone. I knew it!”

Just then Kurt felt a light thud against his chest. He looked down to find a dank white spitball marring the lapel of his purple suit jacket.

“Hay, Hummel. Does Boy George know that you’ve been in his closet?”

Kurt looked up. It was Noah Puckerman standing at the next table over, a straw dangling from his mouth.

Rachel shot him a look of death. “Shove it, Noah.”

“I’m sorry, did I interrupt something important between faggoty fag and his fag hag?”

She took Kurt’s hand possessively. “Kurt and I are very much in love. He’s more of a man than you’ll ever be.”

Puck walked over to their table, leaning against it and angling his crotch toward Rachel’s face. “Don’t knock it before you try it, sweetheart.”

Kurt snapped. “Stay away from my girlfriend, dickweed.”

“I’ll do whatever I want, Fruit Roll-Up. Rachel likes it.” Noah nodded to her. “Right, sugar?”

She stuck up her nose. “Wrong, Noah. What would your mother think?”

“Oh, c’mon. Admit it.” Puck leaned over, his face in hers – too close, much too close, Mr. Ryerson-levels of closeness that made Kurt’s vision go red. “You’re only half-Jewish, right? Puck-Man could put a little more Jew in you.”

The smack of Rachel’s palm across Puck’s face crackled through the cafeteria. The tables around them went silent. The eyes of half the school were on them, but Kurt could barely feel them. Something uncoiled in his chest like a dragon waking from slumber.

Puck snarled, knocking his chair to the floor as he stood up. “You know what a tampon and a J.A.P. have in common, Rachel? You’re both stuck up cunts.”

The dragon leapt and Kurt’s body went with it, knocking Puck to the floor. The dragon thrashed and punched, over and again, its tail lashing through Kurt’s fists, taking revenge on Puck’s face – revenge again Puck, yes, but also against Mr. Ryerson and AIDS and hopelessness and every schoolyard bully he’d ever known.

When the blood started streaming from Puck’s nose, Kurt thought he should probably stop, but the dragon had other plans. His fists didn’t stop flying until three teachers managed to pry him away.

* * *

Since it was only his first offense, Kurt got off with being sent home for the rest of the day and a week’s worth of detention. Puck got a broken nose and, given his previous violations, two days suspension.

The only think Kurt regretted about the incident was the look on his father’s face when he came to pick Kurt up.

Kurt waited for Puck’s friends to gang up on him in revenge, but it turned out that Puck didn’t really have many friends – or if he did, they must have decided that Kurt’s victory was fair and square. Kurt’s esteem suddenly shot up in the school.

Not even Finn was upset about it. He ended up in detention that week, too, and the first thing he said upon seeing Kurt there was, “Hey, I heard about the fight. Puck must have been a real douchebag to get you that angry.”

“He hit on my girlfriend.” That’s how Kurt had started telling the story. There was something super-straight and macho about beating the crap out of someone just for looking at your girl.

“Huh. He’s always going after my girlfriend, too. It’s really annoying.” Finn reached over and slapped Kurt on the shoulder. Kurt’s heart turned into Jell-O. “Well, you did good. It’s about time someone clocked him for that.”

“Why do you hang out with him?”

“I don’t know.” Finn shrugged. “Never really thought about that question.”

“Maybe you should think about hanging out with someone you don't want to punch in the face.”

* * *

And that’s how Finn and Kurt started hanging out. It started sporadically at first, Finn sitting with Kurt and Rachel at lunch on days that Puck was in trouble and Quinn was off doing extra practice for the cheerleading squad. He’d look confused as they explained to him the significance of each work in Judy Garland’s oeuvre, and he’d talk about the drum riffs he was teaching himself from the latest 38 Special’s _Special Forces_ album. And he’d always beg the last of the french fries off each of their trays. They were only too happy to share.

Despite initial appearances, it turned out there was a lot of overlap in their musical tastes. Kurt and Finn liked the hard edge of Pat Benatar and Heart; Rachel and Finn had a soft spot for the sentimentality of Journey and REO Speedwagon; and they all agreed on David Bowie, Elton John, and the Pretenders.

But the one that surprised Kurt the most was Cyndi Lauper. He loved her, of course, for her theatricality; Rachel loved that she was a strong independent woman; and Finn bought the album because “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” had a great beat, but fell in love with her because of [“Time After Time”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdQY7BusJNU&index=15&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W).

“Why that one?” Kurt said, taking a bite of his apple. It was just the two of them at the table; Rachel had just gotten up to empty her tray. “It’s so sad.”

Finn shrugged. “It makes me think of my dad. Like he’s singing it to me.”

“Your dad sings?”

“No.” Finn shook his head, the light in his eyes suddenly extinguishing. He was a little lost boy; Kurt fought the urge to each across the table and cover Finn’s hand with his own. “Or maybe? I don’t know. He died in Vietnam. Most of what I know about him is from a trunk of his old stuff that my mom never threw out.”

There was an unfamiliar feeling in Kurt’s chest, like a flower had planted itself there and was caught between closing in on itself and blooming. “My dad’s the same way. My mom died when I was eight and he still keeps her toothbrush on the holder by their sink.” Blooming, now. It was definitely blooming. He’d never told that to anyone, not even Rachel. “The broken dresser in their room still smells like her perfume. I know it’s stupid, but sometimes I’ll sneak in there, open all the drawers and lie on the floor and close my eyes and just smell her.”

“That’s not stupid. I do that with my dad’s trunk and I don’t even remember him.”

Finn was so beautiful in that moment – stunning, really, with the bittersweet half-smile turning the corner of his lip and the dimple in his cheek and the spark of recognition in his eyes, deep layers of understanding that Kurt had never noticed before.

“What’d I miss?” Rachel’s voice came crashing into their silence.

Finn looked up with eyes wide, a deer caught in the headlights. “Um, stuff. And stuff.”

“Oh?” She smoothed her skirt as she sat down. “What kind of stuff?”

Finn gave Kurt a helpless look. Well, Kurt could try to be Finn’s knight in shining armor, if he must. “We all like Cyndi Lauper.”

Finn let out a relieved smile. “Yeah.”

“Oooh!” squealed Rachel, clapping her hands together. “Kurt and I do a little get-together-and-sing thing at my house every week. You should come sometime. My dad has an old drum set you could play.”

Finn’s mouth made a perfect little ‘o’ of surprise. “Wouldn’t that make me, like, a third wheel on your date?”

“No,” Kurt and Rachel answered in unison.

* * *

It actually happened. In late May, Finn agreed to come over to Rachel’s house for a Saturday afternoon music session. Rachel dropped hints that Kurt was a keyboardist _par excellence_ and that she was Lima’s answer to Akron’s Chrissie Hynde – but failed to mention most of this to Kurt until the afternoon before their get-together.

“You told him _what?”_ It was beneath Kurt’s dignity to scream into the phone, but he did it anyway.

“You had piano lessons when you were little. You can wing it.”

“From _Aunt Mildred._ Who was usually _drunk_. I cannot ‘wing it,’ Rachel Berry.” He hung up on her, booked it over to Between the Sheets to buy a Top 40 fake book, and went over to Aunt Mildred’s to practice until 9 p.m.

He needn’t have been so nervous, because Finn didn’t really know how to play the drums, either. His only experience with percussion was tapping pencils on the edge of a desk. And the two of them were miles ahead of Rachel, who tried to pass an autoharp off as a guitar.

And it was … fun. Imperfect, yes, and incredibly embarrassing for Kurt every time he slipped up on the piano (which was a lot), but Finn didn’t seem to care at all. “You totally kick ass at that, dude! You could be, like, the next Billy Joel!”

Kurt’s cheeks turned pink. “I really don’t think so.”

“Elton John, maybe? I guess he dresses more your style.”

Kurt ducked his head. “Maybe one day.”

Finn said nice things to Rachel, too – of course he did, because that’s the kind of guy Finn was – but Kurt didn’t take notice of them. By the end of the afternoon, the three of them were talking about possible band names and had narrowed it down to The Chain Gang after the [Pretenders’ song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK3uf5V0pDA&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W&index=27) and The Holidays after [the hit](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X7RyGBq2E8&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W&index=30) by that new singer Madonna.

After Finn left, Rachel and Kurt both burst into giggles and bonded over how adorable he was.

* * *

Their band dissolved when Rachel left for the summer – first to visit her mother in New York, and then to Michigan for a six-week musical theater program at Interlochen. LeRoy and Hiram gave him a set of keys so he could keep practicing on their piano, and soon he realized that he enjoyed it for its own sake, not just as an excuse to hang out with Finn.

He watched their house when they went to California for a few weeks to watch the summer Olympics and tour the wine country. They paid him even though there wasn’t much to do but bring in their mail and water the garden, and getting to have a house all to himself for several hours each day – especially one with a VCR and cable – was more of a treat than a burden. He liked to spend mornings on the back deck, reading fashion magazines and admiring the growing rhododendron bush he’d given Hiram a few years before.

On his fifth day watching the house, Kurt screwed up the courage to call Finn and invite him over. He’d never hung out alone with Finn before, but it couldn’t be _all_  that difficult, could it? They could practice music together, or watch movies on the VCR, or watch _Fraggle Rock_ on HBO, or make out – well, okay, maybe not the last one. But they could sit next to each other on the couch, and that would be almost as nice.

“I totally want one of these VCR things,” Finn said muttered as he put _E.T._ into the player. “I keep meaning to save money up for one but then I end up spending it on presents for my mom.”

Kurt fell a little more desperately in love.

Finn came back almost every day after that. They played a little music, but mostly they sat in front of the TV, alternating between the summer Olympics on ABC and movies from the video store a few blocks away.

Like much of the nation, Kurt and Finn got swept up in gymnastics fever. U.S. gymnasts had higher medal hopes than ever before since the Soviet bloc was boycotting this Olympics. Mary Lou Retton got perfect tens on the floor routine and the vault, and within minutes it seemed her picture plastered every commercial break for the rest of the games.

But the men’s gymnastics were what Finn and Kurt both preferred. “Dude, dude, look at what that guy’s doing!” Finn would proclaim when Mitch Gaylord or Bart Connor did an especially impressive swing on the bars. He didn’t have to tell Kurt to look, though; Kurt couldn’t take his eyes off those men, all muscle and elegance and beauty.

On his way home in the evenings, Kurt would stop at the playground and pretend he was one of those gymnasts. At first, he just focused on pulling himself up above the monkey bars without help from his legs. By the end of the summer, he could do a half-flip on the rings and almost raise himself into a handstand on top of the jungle gym.

When Finn and Kurt went to the video store to look for [_War Games_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbqMuvnx5MU&list=PL-cIAjOpypsE9uz6vZnYOucuRitY5PE7o) a few days before Hiram and LeRoy were due to return, there was a new clerk behind the counter – a compact, muscular boy about their age, conservatively dressed in a pink Izod polo shirt and pleated-front chino shorts. Just another preppy kid in a sea of suburban conformity _,_ except –

Except that he had a jaunty little green-and-purple-striped bowtie knotted at his throat. Kurt had never seen anyone their age wear a bowtie outside of formal dances, and never seen anyone of any age wear one with a polo shirt – but it worked. It was simultaneously bizarre and … alluring. Anyone with the stones to put those two pieces of clothing together, in those colors, had to have a certain vision and comfort with difference that most people didn’t have. It made Kurt wonder …

He suppressed the thought before it could form as words in his mind – even though the pink of the polo shirt flattered the clerk’s olive skin so nicely, and the flecks of green in his mostly-brown eyes that matched the Izod alligator emblazoned on his left breast. He had enough wave in his dark brown hair that he could have sported a trendy feathered mullet if he wanted to, but instead he had it short and slicked back with a dramatic side part, _a la_ Rock Hudson in the 1950s.

It was … absolutely terrible, really. The boy was one of the most gorgeous guys Kurt had ever seen, on par with Finn Hudson and the entire U.S. men’s gymnastics team.

Worse yet, Finn had gone ahead to the adjacent grocery store to buy a bag of Twizzlers, and so Kurt had absolutely no one to hide behind when the boy gave him a smile so open that the kindness in it vibrated down to Kurt’s toes. “Good afternoon. Did you find what you were looking for today?” he said, tilting his head like the top curve of a question mark.

Kurt’s heart was rammed up so high in his throat that it seemed best not to risk speaking. He handed over the video and his membership card, then tried to swallow his heart back into a more appropriate location as he watched the boy enter the rental into a logbook and remove the anti-theft lock from the tape case.

“That will be a dollar and six cents, Mr. Hummel.”

Usually, Kurt would have the money already out, but apparently he was a tad distracted. “It’s Kurt, by the way,” he said as he fished in his wallet for exact change and handed it over. “My dad’s Mr. Hummel.”

The boy smiled again. It was radiant – brighter than the hot summer sun and the cool evening moon and the neon lights of Broadway. “Nice to meet you, Kurt. My name’s Blaine.” He offered his hand. Kurt shook it. A tingle shot up Kurt’s arm the same way it had when Michael took his hand on the lakeshore all those years ago.

Which was absolutely ridiculous, of course, because this was a simple handshake with a dude who probably had as many girlfriends as polo shirts.

“Nice to meet you, too, Blaine,” Kurt said and then, like a total dweeb, added, “Are you new around here?”

“Yeah. Just started today, in fact.”

Kurt couldn’t help but smile. “I never would have guessed. You removed that anti-theft lock like an old pro.”

Something like a blush bloomed on Blaine’s cheeks. It was fetching and did things to Kurt’s insides that he hadn’t quite felt before. “Thanks,” Blaine said.

“Do you live around here? I haven’t seen you at McKinley.”

“I go to private school.”

Oh god. Definitely not gay. Just an obnoxious country club WASP who dressed well because his parents could pay people with good taste to pick out clothes for him. Kurt suddenly realized he was still holding on to Blaine’s ( _strong but gentle, slightly calloused but well-moisturized_ ) hand. He dropped it like a hot coal.

It didn’t occur to him until he was walking home that evening that Blaine had held on to his hand as long as he had held on to Blaine’s.

 _Stop reading so much into it,_ he told himself, and vowed not to come back to the Video Station until he could better control his hormones. He’d have Finn return the movie.

* * *

After the Olympic closing ceremonies, Finn and Kurt talked late into the night. They sat at either end of the couch, their legs sprawled toward the center, their ankles sometimes touching as one of them shifted against the cushions. Kurt had never realized how erotic ankles could be. It was like all of his nerve-endings had moved into that one square centimeter of skin.

But he didn’t allow the touches to distract him from what Finn was saying. “Okay, but do you think aliens _could_ come to earth?” The impetus for this question had been the [closing ceremonies](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0_3RNjuKSk) themselves, during which a flying saucer hovered into the Los Angeles Coliseum and an 8-foot alien stepped out to congratulate the people of the earth for their awesome the Olympic Games. It had already taken Kurt the better part of an hour to convince Finn that the whole thing had been special effects and not, in fact, a real alien visitation.

“I guess,” Kurt said. “I’m not really sure why they’d want to, though. I mean, if they’re smart enough to travel light-years through space, it’s not like they’d have much to learn from us. Though maybe we’d be a good vacation destination. You know, the way people go to Yellowstone to see the scenery. Maybe aliens would come here to watch the fascinating but obviously inferior humans.”

“Huh. Do you think they’d hunt us, too. Like elk?”

“It seems like an awfully long way to travel just to go on a hunting trip.”

Finn breathed a sigh of relief. “You think of everything. I’m glad we’re friends.” His face was six feet away, but still there was something so intimate and bare about the expression on his face. His smile was guileless and sweet, the way that Michael had looked at Kurt so many years before.

“Me, too.” Kurt’s heart pounded in his throat.

“It’s weird, because you’re way smarter than me but I don’t feel stupid when I talk to you. You listen like I have something important to say.”

“You do, Finn.” Kurt’s heart was everywhere in his body, pushing against his skeleton, being wrung out like a sponge.

“You’re not like the other guys I hang out with.”

“Ha. I hear that a lot.”

“Hey, no.” Finn shifted then, kicking his legs out and planting his feet on the floor. He scooted down the couch, set his hand on Kurt’s shoulder, looked him squarely in the eye. “I … I like that.”

Finn was close enough that Kurt could smell him – Brut 33 and Head & Shoulders mixed with skin and Ho Hos and somehow, against all odds, it was the most intoxicating scent Kurt had ever experienced. And he was looking at Kurt, studying his face unblinkingly, his eyebrow raised like a question, and – _Oh my god he’s going to kiss me, isn’t he?_ Kurt wished his breath didn’t smell like pepperoni pizza and burped-up Coke.

“Um, is there, like, food stuck on my face?”

Kurt shook his head like a dog shaking water out of its ears. “Wh-what?”

“Is there something on my face?” Finn wiped the back of his sleeve across his mouth. “You’re, like, looking at me like there’s something stuck on my face.”

“Oh. … Um. Yeah, there was. But you got it now.” If there had been a moment, Kurt had apparently killed it with his creepy staring.

“Good. For a second there I thought maybe I’d freaked you out.”

“What … why would you have freaked me out?”

Finn walked across the room to pick the empty pizza box off the floor. He shrugged. “Puck says I sound like a homo whenever I say anything nice to him.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Yeah, it is. I don’t know what’s so faggy about liking another person. It doesn’t mean you want to make out with them.”

Kurt crossed his arms across his stomach and frowned. “The queers ruin everything, don’t they?”

Finn leaned against the television console. “How do you mean?”

Kurt forced a sardonic smile. “First they give people AIDS. Then they destroy male bonding.”

Finn didn’t say anything. He just laughed his sweet, guileless laugh.

* * *

Kurt began to notice things when Rachel came back to town and the three of them began to hang out together again. He noticed how she fluttered her lashes and twirled her hair and giggled at everything Finn said. He noticed how Finn would blush and look at her boobs and blush again.

“Maybe we should stop holding hands in front of other people,” Rachel said the day before the new school year began. “Everyone thinks we’re still going out.”

“Who cares what they think?”

“I do. I’d like to have a _real_ boyfriend one day, but if they think I’m going out with you –”

“Fine. Announce to the entire world that you’re on the market. But then you can forget about me taking you to homecoming.”

That shut her up. He’d already started the alterations on their coordinating outfits.

On the first day of school, Kurt saw a poster about a new show choir being formed. Kurt knew three things about show choir: (1) it was awesome preparation for Broadway, (2) the girls and guys always danced in pairs, so even if he ended up singing with the altos or sopranos the audience wouldn’t be able to tell, because he would be dancing the boys’ parts, and (3) it was kind of gay, but if he could get Finn Hudson to join, it would become the coolest thing in the school and no one would question the manliness of it.

Tryouts were on two separate days, with kids drawing their audition slots out of a hat. Rachel and Finn went in on the first day and got offers before they’d even finished their songs. Kurt tried out the second day, which he was thankful for – it gave him time to prepare something different from his preferred repertoire of Garland and Streisand standards. He knew if he was going to be taken seriously, he had to go with something hypermasculine that he could still put his heart into.

He looked through his dad’s old rock collection and found something promising: Queen’s [_A Day at the Races_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI0AfZSCFVc&index=69&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W) _._ By the time he had listened once through, he’d found the perfect audition song. The beat and the guitar and the power of it were so manly that just listening to it made a few new hairs sprout on Kurt’s chest, and the lyrics told the story of his life. He was going to nail his audition.

The teacher’s jaw dropped when Kurt hit the high note at the end of “[Somebody to Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pMM4iwC-ag&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W),” and he started clapping before Kurt was even done. The audition was in the bag.

“Wow, Kurt – it’s Kurt, right?” Mr. Schuester glanced down at the sign up sheet. “That was really incredible. Your technique and your range and the emotion you put into that song – you have a lot of talent.”

“Thanks, sir.”

“But –” Mr. Schuester frowned. “We mostly do show tunes and standards, not rock. I’m sure you understand that the kind of music this show choir is going to do just isn’t written for a voice like yours.”

“I sing standards all the time. And I have the same range as Rachel Berry,” Kurt said. “Bigger actually. More like Johnny Mathis. Here, play a low –”

“Johnny Mathis sounds like a girl. Every person in the show choir has to be able to carry a solo, and –”

“I can. I just did.’”

“I just don’t have a place for you.”

“Look, why don’t I do another song? Just give me the starting note of ‘Maria’ from _West Side Story_.”

“I have other students waiting for a turn, Karl. I’m sorry.”

“I can go down to bass if you need me to. And Freddie Mercury –”

“Look, you can try again next year after your voice has changed. Or maybe you could join a church choir. They’d have more things suited to the way you sing.”

Kurt mumbled “thank you” as he left the room. Rachel waved to him in the hallway but he was incapable of turning toward her. He felt like an automaton – his body just an imitation of life, empty of emotion or soul, moving out of compulsion the same way that clockwork moves.

He didn’t remember driving home. His father was still at work; he could have run around the house screaming [“Rose’s Turn”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7fDrW3iYFo&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W) at the top of his lungs. But he didn’t. He refused to cry. It wasn’t like he needed anything else to add to his fag resume, anyway.

The phone rang at 5 p.m. He knew it would be Rachel asking how the audition went. He let it ring itself out, and then she called twice again for more than twenty rings. He finally took the phone off the handle and let it hang there until his dad got home.

* * *

Rachel cried the next morning when Kurt told her the news. “I’m so sorry, Kurt. I was sure you’d get in. You’re the Danny to my Sandy, the Sonny Malone to my Kira, the Fred Astaire to my Ginger Rogers, the Judy Garland to my Barbra Streisand –” She collapsed into Kurt’s arms, pressing her cheek against his chest. He could feel her tears, warm and damp, slipping through the fabric of his shirt.

He kissed her forehead. “I know. I thought I’d get in, too.”

She sniffled and looked up at him. Her hair was falling into her face, stuck to her skin by sweat and tears. “I won’t join the show choir then. Not without you. It’s not right.”

“Honey.” He pushed her hair back from her face. He didn’t usually use endearments with her, but if there was a time to do it, it was now. “It’s your dream to perform. You have to do this.”

“But it’s your dream, too.”

“I’ll find another way. Maybe start another band.”

Rachel laughed wryly and wiped a knuckle under her eye. “Find someone who can actually play the guitar this time.”

“I will. Or maybe I’ll do a solo thing like Elton John.”

“Kurt, I –”

“Do this. Okay? I want to watch you on stage.”

She buried her face in his chest again. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too.”

* * *

On days that he was giving Rachel a ride home, Kurt would watch the end of show choir rehearsal from the hallway. She would inevitably be dancing with Finn, her eyes bright and blinking coquettishly through whatever she was singing. Finn seemed incapable of looking away from her, his eyes full of tenderness, awe, desire.

On the way to her house, Kurt would talk animatedly and listen to her recount the details of rehearsal, laughing and smiling with her as if every word weren’t a stab in his heart.

But as soon as she got out of the car and skipped off to her front door, the smile disappeared. He’d get his copy of the _Yentl_ soundtrack out of the glove compartment, rewind to the beginning of “[Will Someone Ever Look at Me That Way?](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXV95y1rURQ&index=32&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W)” and sing his pain into the lonely cab:

_Look at how he looks at her_   
_Will someone ever I look at me that way-_   
_Full of all the feelings and the soft_   
_Unspoken words that lovers say?_   
_I thought that I knew every single look_   
_and sweet expression on his face,_   
_Yet this is one that I don't recognize,_   
_Although I've sat and studied him for hours._   
_But now I see how love completely occupies_   
_A pair of eyes._

* * *

Kurt knew he was losing Finn. So he made one last-ditch effort to show what him what he could be.

He joined the varsity football team.

It had been out a decent kicker since the first day of school, when the boy previously in that position busted his kneecap after falling out of the ceiling above the girls’ locker room. The kicker from the JV team had become similarly indisposed while trying to recreate a chase scene from [_BMX Bandits_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsNjqh1MxiQ&list=PL-cIAjOpypsE9uz6vZnYOucuRitY5PE7o)with a bunch of his friends _._

Kurt had been able to kick as high as his head since the age of 6, when he’d seen [_Gigi_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9J6G_rdSDI&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W) on UHF with his mother, and he’d been getting progressively better at it while dancing along with [_Fame_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV9ajjn46dY&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W) _’s_ musical numbersevery week.

On the day of tryouts, Kurt strapped a Walkman on under his clothes, crammed the helmet over his earphones, and got in line to kick that silly little pigskin ball. It only occurred to him then that maybe he should have practiced with an actual ball at some point.

No matter. With Erica Gimpel crying “Remember my name!” in his ears, he kicked it over the goal and into the stands.

He was on the team.

* * *

Walking out to his car later that afternoon, Kurt heard footsteps catching up to him. He whipped around – a defensive more that had become instinct years ago.

It was Puck. “Kurt, I need to talk to you.”

“Fuck off.” Kurt turned back and picked up his pace.

“No, really, I need –” Puck reached for Kurt’s elbow. Which was, to say the least, a mistake.

Kurt whacked Puck’s arm away and kept walking. “You need to stay the fuck away from me is what you _need_ , Puckerman. I don’t care if we’re on the same team now. You touch me again and I’ll break more than your nose this time.”

“I get it, dude. We’re chill.”

“We will never be _chill.”_ Kurt expected that to be the end of things, and it seemed to be for a few moments as Puck stood frozen behind him.

But then the jog of Puck’s feet started up again. “Um, yeah. That’s actually what I need to talk to you about.”

Kurt stopped and scanned the lot. It was mostly empty of cars by now, but it was a gorgeous Indian summer day so plenty of kids were still straggling around the grounds: punks smoking on the hood of a Chevy Monte Carlo, nerds playing with Rubik’s Cubes under the linden trees, hippies kicking a hacky sack, a group of cheerleaders practicing their cartwheels on the lawn. It wasn’t exactly protection, but the fact that there were witnesses helped Kurt breathe a little easier.

He turned and glared at Puck. “Okay, what is it?”

“Wait. You’re actually going to listen to me?” Puck took a step back. “I wasn’t actually expecting that part.”

“Stop wasting my time with all your verbal foreplay and say what you need to say.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay.” Puck shoved his hands in his pockets. “Okay, so … you know anything about Yom Kippur?”

“What did I say about verbal foreplay?”

“Right.” Puck looked down at his feet. “Um, I need to ask your forgiveness.”

That … was not what Kurt was expecting. “Excuse me?”

“Yom Kippur is coming up, it’s –”

“Yeah, I know, Rachel’s gonna be in temple all Saturday.”

“Okay, then. So you know. I need to start the year off with a clean slate by making up for every shitty thing I’ve done.”

“Wait. Kids are supposed to do that, too?”

“I’m not a kid. I’ve had my bar mitzvah.”

This was new information. Rachel had had her bat mitzvah three years ago and still had never asked him to forgive her for anything, even though he was sure he could come up with several infractions if she bothered to ask. “Must be a long list of people.”

Puck didn’t smile. “Yeah. It is.”

“So what do you want my forgiveness for? Not that I’m promising any.”

“Um, yeah, so … those two times I threw you in the dumpster and that other time I tried to. Also, for flirting with your girlfriend in front of you –”

“Is that what you call it? Flirting?”

“Hitting on?”

“How about ‘harassing’?”

Puck jumped back. “Dude, I never touched her ass!”

“That’s not what ‘harass’ means. It means … pestering somebody. Making their life miserable.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, I’m sorry for pestering Rachel in front of you –”

“I think that’s something you’ll have to ask Rachel’s forgiveness for.”

“Shit man, are you serious?”

Kurt glared at him.

“I mean, totally dude. I’ll do that.”

“Anything else? I kind of have to get going. I told my dad I’d make dinner.”

“Um, yeah. I need you to forgive me for, um, calling you fag and stuff, because even if your voice is all high and you dress like the love child of Prince and Boy George, that’s just appearances and stuff and doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not you want to fuck boys. Which obviously you wouldn’t because Rachel is totally bodacious and you guys are always kissing and stuff so clearly you’re straight as an arrow and – well yeah. All that.”

Kurt was tempted to break Puck’s nose again. But he had a more powerful weapon now. “I don’t forgive you, Puck.”

Pucks eyes went so wide they looked like they were about to pop out of his head. “Wait, but, I asked sincerely and stuff.”

“You did not ask sincerely. There wasn’t one sincere thing about that apology.”

“No, dude, you don’t get it, I’m trying, I –”

“Then prove it to me, Puck. Stop throwing people in dumpsters. Stop hitting on girls who don’t like you. Stop calling guys ‘fags’ just because you’re scared of them.”

“Dude, i’m not scared of you.”

Kurt stepped toward him.

Puck flinched. “Okay, fine. I’m a little scared of you.”

“Stop using the word ‘fag’ at all. Stop calling girls ‘cunts.’ Stop being an all-around dick.”

“I’m not sure I can do that.”

“Well, that’s too bad. Because I’ve got the upper hand here. You’re the one who needs my forgiveness, and you not being a dick is the only way I’m ever going to forgive you. Take it or leave it.”

Puck frowned like a petulant child. “I’ll think about it.”

“You do that.” Kurt turned on his heels and made the rest of the way to his car. As he pulled out, he saw that Puck hadn’t moved from the spot on the asphalt where Kurt had left him. He just stood there, a vacant stare on his face, like a child who had just lost his mother.

* * *

On Kurt’s third day of football practice, he was greeted by one of the offensive linemen blocking the door to the locker room. Kurt stood tall. “I know I’m new around here, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to block players until we’re on the field.”

Azimio didn’t move. “Dude, I can’t let you into this locker room. You look like a fag and you dress like Prince, which means you probably have AIDS, and I read in the newspaper that fags like you are giving AIDS to normal people by sharing towels with them and shit. _You_ are a public health hazard.”

“Your ignorance is a public health hazard.”

“Who’re you calling ignorant, cracker?”

Kurt was considering whether the fun of saying “you” was worth the beating he would endure as a result when there was a sudden flash of movement behind Azimio and the lineman collapsed to the ground with a loud, “Motherfucker!”

Puck pounced on top of him, his fist raised and ready to punch. “Don’t be such a dipshit, Azimio.  Prince gets more pussy in a week than you’ll ever get in your lifetime. The girls go crazy for a sharp-dressed man. I think you’re just upset because Hummel here is getting more lady-action than your virgin dick.”

Azimio tried to throw Puck off but it was futile. Puck had Azimio’s arms pinned to his sides with his knees. “Fuck you, Puckerman.”

Puck laughed. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But I don’t swing that way, and neither does Hummel. So apologize to him, dickweed.”

“Are you serious?”

Puck pulled back his fist.

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Azimio muttered. He glanced over at Kurt. “Sorry, Hummel. I was just joshing around. We always fuck with the new guys a little, toughen em’ up, you know?”

It’s not dignified to kick a man when he’s down, but Kurt kicked Azimio anyway, just hard enough to make a point. There was only one way to survive high school, and that was to show people that you could fuck with them harder than they could fuck with you. “That doesn’t sound like a sincere apology, Azimio.”

“Yeah, yeah. Fine. I’m sorry, Kurt. I shouldn’t be calling you names and shit. I won’t do it again.”

Puck clenched his teeth. “That’s right you won’t. Because if you do I’m gonna plant smack and some nice hypodermic needles in your locker and _then_ we’ll see who gets kicked off the team for having AIDS, douchewad. Now go bag your ugly face in that helmet of yours so I don’t have to look at it again the rest of this afternoon.”

After that, Kurt had no problems in the locker room. Some of the guys on the team even grew to like him. It didn’t hurt that his kicks always scored and they won every game for the rest of the season.

On the bus back from away games, he would sit in the back row on one side of Finn with Puck on the other. Puck wasn’t exactly at the level of “friend,” but Kurt was on his way to forgiving him. By early November, the ice between them had melted so much that when Puck spontaneously tackle-hugged him after a winning kick, Kurt had no inclination to knee him in the balls. “I should have known you had it in you, Smurf,” Puck said happily. Kurt wished the affection didn’t feel so much like a lifeline.

Kurt was growing closer to Finn, but not close enough. He saw Finn every day, changed next to him in the locker room with eyes averted, listened to his woes about girls. Quinn had broken up with him again, and he wondered when he was ever going to lose his virginity. Also, he kind of missed cuddling.

“Maybe you should take a break from girls for a while.” Kurt resisted the urge to sit down next to Finn on the bench and show him what a good cuddler he could be. He combed his hair and kept his voice smooth, casual. Macho. “Anyway, you get into sex and soon enough you end up getting a girl pregnant.”

“But don’t you sleep with Rachel? Rachel’s not pregnant.”

Kurt’s spine went rigid. On the one hand, there was his reputation to defend. On the other hand, there was Rachel’s. “A gentleman doesn’t besmirch a woman’s virtue.”

“Um, I totally don’t know what half those words mean, dude.” Finn pulled his undershirt on over his head. It was finally safe to look at him, so Kurt did. Finn had that slightly constipated look that crossed his face whenever he’d been thinking too hard. “I gotta ask you something personal, Kurt.”

Kurt looked away. He pulled a can of hairspray out of his gym bag and studied himself in the mirror. He was Kurt Hummel. He was an island. He was granite. He could handle anything. “So ask.”

“How do you keep Rachel from getting pregnant? Puck said if you do it standing up you’re okay, but it seems like it would be more romantic to have sex in bed, you know?”

The can of hairspray slipped from Kurt’s hand and went clanking to the floor. “Um, Finn,” he said, turning around slowly to face his friend. “That’s not how to keep a girl from getting pregnant.”

“Really? But Puck said that gravity keeps the little swimmers from –”

“Puck isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Didn’t you pay any attention in sex ed last year?”

Finn shrugged. “Every time they mentioned eggs I’d just start thinking about Denny’s and get hungry. It was hard to keep everything straight.”

It would be a lie to say that Kurt had never imagined teaching Finn the finer points of intimacy. But he had imagined it as a hands-on demonstration. And he certainly hadn’t imagined having to teach Finn how to be intimate with a girl.

But a friend must be a friend. So after Finn got on the rest of his clothes and Kurt’s hair was in place, they sat on the bench together and Kurt drew cartoons that made his face burst into flames.

“Oh,”  Finn said finally, his eyes lighting up as if a lightbulb really _had_ gone off in his head. “So _that’s_ how it works.”

“Yes, Finn,” Kurt said, folding up the piece of paper and stowing it in Finn’s coat pocket for later reference. “That’s how procreation works. … Of course, there are other ways to express affection.” If only Finn would let him.

* * *

“We need to officially break up,” Rachel said the day before Christmas. “I’m sick of being your beard.”

“My what?”

“Your beard. It’s what you call a woman who dates a gay guy so he can stay in the closet. I’m sick of it, Kurt. Finn is single now and he _likes_ me, I _know_ he does, but every time we start to make out he’s all worried about betraying his friendship with you and –”

The floor fell out from under Kurt’s feet. He fell backward onto the couch. “You did _what_?”

“We made out.” Rachel flipped her hair over her shoulder and stood straighter, her chest sticking out like two rocket ships bursting from the surface of the moon. “Don’t act so shocked. A woman has her needs.”

Kurt closed his eyes. “You cheated on me.”

“Oh please, Kurt. There’s nothing to cheat on.”

“You _betrayed_ me, Rachel.”

“Oh, Kurt, stop being so dramatic. People aren’t going to figure out you’re gay just because your girlfriend breaks up with you. It’s high school. That’s what people do.”

He buried his face in his hands. He could feel the room reeling under him, even though his eyes were closed. “It’s not about that.”

“What, because you think he’s cute? It’s not like you ever had any chance with him.”

“Shut up, Rachel.” Kurt opened his eyes to see if the room was really moving as fast as it felt it was. Everything went suddenly still, but he didn’t dare look around in case it started spinning again. He just stared at the spot of carpet near his feet. The shag, so new and plush when Kurt had first started coming over here, was beginning to wear thin in spots.

And she saw something then – she must have seen it – in his face. “Oh my god.” She stepped closer, put her French-manicured fingers on his knee. “Are you actually in love with Finn Hudson?”

“Shut up.” Oh please no. The tears were starting. Kurt tried to blink them back into his eyes, but he couldn’t. They rolled out, forward, onto his face.

“Is that why you wouldn’t let me break up with you? You wanted to keep him all to yourself?” Her fingers curled like talons into the fabric of his pants, the skin of his knee.

 _“Shut. Up.”_ He pressed his hands over his ears, but he couldn’t block out her voice.

“Well.” She stood up then, tall and straight, towering over him. She looked down her nose as she spoke. “I guess now we _both_ know what it’s like to fall in love with someone you can never have.”

He shot up off the couch. “Is that what this is about? Revenge for me not loving you enough? I _wanted_ to, Rachel, you don’t know how hard I tried –”

“I don’t need your pity and I don’t need you to try. Finn doesn’t _have_ to _try.”_

“You have no idea how much I wanted to love you. You think I like being this way? You of all people should understand –”

“What I understand is that I’m not going to turn into my mother and waste my life pining away for someone who can’t love me back.”

“Congratu-fucking-lations, Rachel.” Kurt spun on his heels and stormed up the stairs. “I’m glad you’re finally free of the burden that I’ll be carrying around for the rest of my life.”

It was all a blur. Everything was a blur as he grabbed his coat and bag and keys. He thought he heard LeRoy calling down the stairs – _Kurt? Rachel? What’s going on? –_  but he ignored it. He didn’t want to answer to either of the men that raised this dreadful girl.

* * *

He broke down when he got home, pitiably and irrevocably. He took the picture of himself and Rachel out of the frame next to his bed and ripped into pieces the size of confetti. It didn’t make him feel any better, though; it made the loss of his best friend feel as permanent as the loss of his mother. By the time his dad got home, Kurt was still sobbing.

“Oh, kid,” his dad said, settling on the bed and pulling Kurt up into his arms. “What happened?”

“She– she– she–” Kurt gasped.

Burt rubbed his back and reminded him to inhale.

Kurt did, but it was only enough air to get out the words, “Finn Hudson,” before he broke into sobbing again.

He felt his father kiss the top of his head. “I’m so sorry, kid. I know how much you love her.”

Kurt wailed.

* * *

Kurt a 5-octave Yamaha keyboard from his dad for Christmas. He hadn’t been expecting anything so extravagant; he broke down and cried for the second time in two days.

Even though he loved it, he couldn’t bring himself to play it for more than 15 minutes at a time. Every time he did, he thought of the fun, terribly talentless jam sessions he used to have with Rachel and Finn, and he’d start crying again.

For most of vacation, he shut himself in his room and sang along to the _Yentl_ soundtrack, from start to finish, over and over.

Two days before New Year’s, Kurt realized he was absolutely disgusting. He hadn’t changed the sheets in a week, and he honestly couldn’t remember the last time he had showered.

He wasn’t ready to snap out of it, but he had to at least try to keep on living. He was supposed to be back at school in a few days. He couldn’t face Finn and Rachel again in this condition.

So he got into the shower and sang more songs from _Yentl_ and managed not to cry – or at least the little that he did cry washed down the drain with all the stink and sloth.

Kurt could smell something good cooking when he stepped out of the bathroom. His dad must have come home from work. Kurt decided to make himself useful for the first time in a week. “Hey,” he said as he walked into  the kitchen. “You need help?”

His dad lowered the pot to simmer and set the stirring spoon on the stove beside it. “No, kid, I’m good.”

Oh, well. So much for being useful. Kurt started to walk away. Maybe he could clean the living room. “Okay, then, I’ll –”

“Wait.”

“Yeah?” Kurt looked at his dad warily.

“I need you to know something.” But his dad just stood there, opening his mouth and closing it again, not saying anything.

“Dad?”

He looked like he was about to cry. Kurt couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen that – in the months after his mother’s death, maybe? It had been a long time. “Kurt,” his father said, voice breaking on the syllable. “I love you no matter what. I need you to know that.”

“I –” Kurt hesitated. Whatever he’d been expecting, it hadn’t been that. His dad had never been prone to spontaneous shows of affection. “Am I in trouble? Are you sick?”

Burt shook his head and pulled Kurt to him. “Nah. Everything’s okay. I just realized today – I don’t tell you enough how much I love you.”

“I know you love me, Dad,” Kurt murmured against his shoulder, realizing as he said it that it was true. “I know I’m being unbearable right now, but – I’m a teenager. That’s kind of my job, right?”

Burt chuckled. “About right. You do your job and I’ll do mine, okay?”

Kurt squeezed him back. “I love you, too.”

* * *

[ _Why is it that every time I close my eyes he’s there –_ _  
_ _The water shining on in his, the sunlight in his hair?_ ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGn2uYl-JMo&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W&index=7)

A soft knock on his bedroom door. “Kurt? You have a visitor.”

“Tell her to go away.”

“It’s not Rachel. It’s Finn.”

_And all the while I'm thinking things  
That I can never share with him. _

“Shit!” Kurt jumped from his bed and slammed the tape player off. “Be there in a minute, Dad.” There was no sound of his dad moving away from the door.

Kurt looked in his vanity mirror and daubed witchhazel under his puffy eyes. He slid his concealer out of the drawer and patted it on his skin. He looked slightly less pathetic now, though the whites of his eyes were still bloodshot. There was nothing to do about that on such short notice. He combed his hair, worked a tiny bit of gel into it to remove the bedhead waywardness of the strands in back. He’d have to leave it at that. It was all he had time for with his dad still standing on the other side of the door.

“Do you need me to stick around?” his dad said when Kurt cracked the door open.

“No, actually. If you could give us a few minutes …”

Burt gave him a doubtful look.

“I promise not to break his nose or anything. Really, Dad. I just … I need to talk to him in private.”

“Fine. I’ll go do yard work or something.”

“It’s winter.”

“Perfect time to prune the rose bushes.”

Burt made himself scarce as soon as they reached the bottom of the stairs. Finn was in the entryway, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his letter jacket. When the back door closed, he started talking. “Kurt, Rachel told me what happened and I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to kiss her, it was just, she was there, and pretty, and I didn’t realize how much I liked her because if I did, I swear I would have stayed away from her. I don’t – it’s not cool to kiss your best friend’s girlfriend.”

Kurt’s not sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t that. Hope fluttered in his chest. “I’m your best friend?”

“Of course you are. I mean, aren’t you?” Finn looked down at the floor. “That’s a really stupid question, isn’t it? I go kiss your girlfriend and I think we can still be friends.”

“I thought Puck was your best friend.”

Finn shrugged. “Puck’s okay, but we can never talk about serious stuff. It’s not like it is with you. Like, I’ve never really talked about him with my dad, you know? And like, when I don’t know stuff about … _stuff_ , he just makes fun of me, and you – you explain things to me and you don’t act like I’m stupid for not knowing. I feel … good about myself. when I’m around you.”

 _Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck._ The goddamn tears were pushing at Kurt’s eyes. _No._ He was not going to cry. _Stay angry. Don’t forgive._ “If I’m your best friend, why did you fool around with Rachel behind my back?”

“ _Dude_ , we just kissed.”

“More than once, I’ve been told.”

“I – I didn’t mean to, Kurt. Honestly, I didn’t. The first time it happened, it was right after Thanksgiving and we were rehearsing this stupid love song that Mr. Schue is obsessed with and – I thought I’d just gotten really good at pretending to be in love with her. Like, I was carried away in the moment, you know?”

“Sort of.”The last time he’d gotten carried away in the moment, he’d broken Puck’s nose. It wasn’t exactly the same.

“And I wanted to tell you but – Rachel told me not to and I know I should have anyway, but then I kept telling myself it was nothing and it didn’t matter and telling you would be like making a fountain out of a ski hill, and then right before Christmas break we had this show choir party and someone hung up mistletoe and – I kissed her. On purpose. I knew what I was doing and I did it. I should have been thinking of you, but I wasn’t, I was only thinking of –”

“Her.” It rushed through Kurt then, the unsettling distance he’d felt every time he’d made out with Rachel. He’d tried so hard to think only of her. But it wasn’t a struggle for Finn. It came as naturally as breathing.

Finn looked up. “Um, I was going to say ‘myself.’”

The hope that had been fluttering in Kurt’s chest went still. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

Finn looked at him. There was a lost, helpless look in Finn’s eyes; his Adam’s apple bobbed heavily. It was the closest Kurt had ever seen him to crying. “I don’t know. I thought I was in love with Quinn, but this is … different.”

“It hurts more.”

“Yeah. But I don’t want it to stop. It’s like that [John Cougar Mellencamp](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4H4lJOoSs8&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W) song, you know?”

Kurt smiled. He couldn’t help it, even though he was blinking back tears. Finn was feeling what Kurt had always wanted him to feel. He just felt it for the wrong person. “Yeah, I know.”

“But –” Finn coughed and stood up straighter. “It doesn’t matter how I feel about her, because she’s your girlfriend, and you’re my friend, and you’re in love with her. I need … I need to respect that.”

 _Deep breath. Deep breath._ “I’m not in love with her, Finn.”

“You mean, because … because I kissed her?”

Kurt shook his head. “I was never in love with her.”

Finn stepped back so fast it looked like he’d been pushed back by a grenade blast. “Dude, I know you’re hurt, but don’t say that.”

“It’s true. I love Rachel. A lot. I love her like family. But I was never _in_ love with her.”

Finn’s brow was curled, his mouth half-open the way it was when he was trying to figure out the answer to a question he’d forgotten to study for. “Could have fooled me.”

“Fooled a lot of people, apparently.”

“But I don’t get it. You guys are like, perfect for each other. You understand all that weird Barbra Streisand stuff she’s always talking about.”

“I know. But –” Kurt shrugged. “I guess you can’t help who you fall in love with. The chemistry’s either there or it’s not.”

“Huh. I can’t imagine not having chemistry with Rachel.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Finn looked at Kurt for a long time, like he was a puzzle to solve. It felt wonderful, and it hurt for feeling wonderful. Kurt didn’t look away.

“So what do you want me to do?” Finn said.

 _Change. Love me. Forget her. Be mine._ “I guess … you should do what your heart tells you to.”

Finn covered his face with his hands, took a deep breath. “I don’t want to hurt you, dude.”

“It’s okay. Rachel deserves someone who cares about her the way you do.”

“But I care about you, too. I mean, you know, not in a gay way but like – like a brother. Or … I think ‘like a brother.’ I’ve never had a brother.”

“I think I know what you mean.”

Finn smiled, dimples pinching his cheeks. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Kurt said. _You mean you don’t love me the same way that I love you._  

And then, without warning, Finn lunged toward him and enveloped him in a tight, breath-crunching hug. Finn’s body was everywhere, his smell inside Kurt’s lungs, and Kurt’s body screamed _Touch him! Touch him!_ but Kurt didn’t move.“I love you so much, little dude,” Finn said, his warm breath parting Kurt’s hair and _oh_ how Kurt wanted to look up – but he didn’t. He kept his arms planted closely to his sides, his hands balled up in fists – _I will not break –_ and at some point Finn finally noticed Kurt wasn’t returning his hug and let him go. “Sorry, dude. Was that too gay?”

Kurt shook his head. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”

“Okay, well … sorry, anyway.”

There was only one way to kill the awkwardness of this moment. So Kurt did it. He punched Finn’s shoulder. “It’s really okay.”

Finn let out a happy little laugh. “Okay. Well, I guess I better go before your dad freezes to death outside.”

“Oh, yeah.” Kurt had forgotten about that.

As Finn stepped out the door, he turned around and gave Kurt one last heartfelt look. “I really hope you find someone to have chemistry with someday. Any girl would be lucky to have you.”

“Thanks, Finn. That means a lot to me.”

Walking the distance from the front door to the back felt like a marathon, but somehow Kurt made it. _I will not break._ He opened the back door, stepped out onto the deck. His dad was over by the back of the garage, piling rose canes by the wall.

 _I will not break._ Kurt breathed deeply, focused his strength like he was about to hit the 19-second high note in _Yentl’s_ finale. “Dad, you can come in now! He’s –” Kurt’s voice broke. “He’s gone.”

* * *

It occurred to Kurt, the way that Burt came running to him and held him like a child after Finn had gone, held him for what seemed like hours as the tears kept coming and coming – it occurred to Kurt that maybe his father knew.

But he wasn’t ready to ask. The moment was so fragile, and Kurt felt so safe, and if he was wrong and he said something – well, the world would break apart into even more pieces than it was broken already. He wasn’t ready for that.

* * *


	10. 1985—Winter (January-March)

**1985**

It was weird returning to school. Rachel didn’t ask Kurt for rides anymore, and she certainly didn’t greet him at his locker each morning with a kiss. Nope – whenever she caught sight of him in the hallways, she’d huff and straighten her spine before turning in the opposite direction.

Finn didn’t treat Kurt like a pariah, but it still tore Kurt’s heart in half to look at him. So he tried not to.

Finn caught up with him anyway as they left their history class their second Monday back at school. “So … do you, like, never want to talk to me again?"

Kurt forced himself to look up at Finn, tried not to feel that stab of desire that went through him when Finn’s eyes were like that – all open and loving and needing to be loved. "No, of course I want to talk to you. You’re still my friend.” He took a deep breath. “Maybe just … we could not talk about Rachel. Like ever."

“Okay, that works.” Finn furrowed his brows together. “Well, except … I kind of have to ask you something about her. But then we can, like, never talk about her. Unless you bring it up.”

“What is it?” _Please god don’t ask me again if I ever fucked her._

“Um, well I … I kind of want to ask her out.”

“Oh.” Kurt came to a dead halt in the middle of the hallway. Finn stopped, too. The other students in the hallway parted like the Red Sea around them.

“Sorry, I can be a real dickbrain sometimes. I shouldn’t have asked that, should I? Forget it.”

“No, it’s fine.” Kurt knew he should look back up at Finn’s eyes, but he couldn’t get farther than the shoulder of his Members Only jacket. “I just … assumed you already had.”

Finn shifted his weight. “No. I didn’t want to go and do that behind your back.”

It was probably best not to point out that Finn had already been going behind his back. “Finn,” Kurt said gently, “you don’t need my permission. She’s not my girlfriend anymore. The only person you need to ask is Rachel.”

Finn scratched the back of his neck. “I’d feel better about it if I had your permission, though. I mean, Puck goes around dating my ex-girlfriends all the time and – I don’t know, I’d just feel better about it if he said something to me first, you know? It’s, like, a respect thing. I respect you, Kurt.”

Kurt put his hand on Finn’s elbow and looked into his eyes – _really_ looked, more steadily than he had ever dared before. They were beautiful, a soft ruddy brown that refracted light like the tourmaline brooch his mother used to wear. “Finn, I want you to be happy. Of course it’s okay with me.” The first part was true. The second part, he wanted to be true.

Finn leaned down and hugged him so hard Kurt’s feet momentarily left the floor. “I’m totally gonna adopt you as my brother. I want to be as awesome as you are one day.”

If Kurt hadn’t been worried about people looking at him funny, he would have skipped the rest of the way to his next class. It was strange how a loss could make him feel so light.

When he thought about it later – coldly and honestly – he had to admit to himself that he hadn’t really lost anything at all. The hope of romance with Finn had been pure fantasy. In the place of hope, something stronger was growing. Not the love that he’d wished for, but love all the same.

* * *

The idea of trying out for the gymnastics team had been in the back of Kurt’s mind, and sometimes the front, ever since the Summer Olympics. It wasn't just because male gymnasts were hot.  In fact, that might have been a bit of a strike against the sport, because it meant that Kurt would probably get a lot more distracted in gymnastics practice than he ever did in football, Finn Hudson notwithstanding.

Kurt still wanted to end up on Broadway, and since he'd been rejected from the show choir and refused to try out for school plays as long as Sandy Ryerson remained the theater teacher, he needed to pick up performance skills somewhere else. Also, it wouldn't hurt to stay active in sports now that football season was over. The 'fag' comments had dropped off precipitously after he'd joined the football team. He wanted it to stay that way.

Given that gymnastics had come to be seen as the pinnacle of masculine athletic expression over the course of the previous summer's Olympics, Kurt was hardly alone in wanting to try out. Sixty guys showed up that afternoon.

“Show me what you got,” a bored-looking Coach Tanaka said when it was Kurt’s turn.

“Can I go on the parallel bars?”

Tanaka didn’t even look up from his clipboard. “Knock your socks off. Just don’t land on your head ‘cause it’s a mess to clean up.”

Kurt leapt up to the bars, swung himself a few times like a pendulum. There was so much more give in the wooden bars than the metal monkey bars on the playground. It was the difference between riding a wave and sitting on solid ground. But still he managed – almost as much to his own surprise as everyone else’s – to slowly pull himself into a handstand.

It was the first time Kurt had ever seen the gym upside down from this height. Coach Tanaka was finally looking at him. From this perspective, Kurt couldn’t tell whether it was an incredulous look or an impressed one.

“Can you turn around?” Coach Tanaka said.

“Um –” Kurt had tried walking with his hands on top of the monkey bars a few times and succeeded. Turning around couldn’t be that much different. He first shifted his weight onto his right arm, then lifted his left hand off the opposite bar and made a quarter twist, setting it next to his right hand. He then shifted his weight onto his left arm and made another quarter twist while reaching his right arm for the opposite bar.

His legs flailed about a bit to help him keep his balance, but it was that or fall off altogether.

Kurt couldn’t see Coach Tanaka anymore, but he heard his voice: “Can you get off the bars without killing yourself?”

Kurt lowered his legs until he was an upside-down L, then swung backward until he was right-side up again. It was only then that he remembered he was supposed to dismount either at the end of the bars or to one side. He swung himself back into a headstand, moved both hands to the left bar, and swung off.

Tanaka frowned. “You haven’t taken any gymnastics lessons, have you?”

Kurt shook his head. “Just in P.E. class.”

“Yeah, I could tell. That wasn’t exactly regulation.”

 _Fuck shit goddammit._ Now Kurt was going to have to try out for the soccer team.

“Pretty good for someone who has no idea what he’s doing, though. And if I remember correctly from your unique way of playing football, you can somersault and cartwheel and do the splits and all that crap, right?”

Kurt nodded. Maybe things were going better than he thought.

“Well, the way I see it, this is a public high school and I'm no Bela Karolyi. Getting on the team shouldn’t depend on whether your daddy paid for lessons. You’re in. Come to all the practices and maybe you'll even get good enough for competition.”

"Thank you, coach. I promise not to disappoint you." Kurt pressed his hands together and made a little bow.

Tanaka frowned. "Trust me. It would be hard to make my life any more disappointing than it already is. Also, don’t put your hands together like that when you bow. This isn’t _The Karate Kid.”_

“Yes, coach.”

“Be here for practice Thursday morning at 7 a.m. sharp.”

Kurt did a few cartwheels on his way back to the locker room.

* * *

With the new year, Kurt had been switched to a new lunch period. Which was probably just as well, because he now didn’t have to worry about dealing with either Rachel or Rachel-and-Finn in the cafeteria. Of course, it did mean having to figure out who to sit with. Kurt sometimes sat with some of the other new members of the gymnastics team, and occasionally with Puck and some of the guys from last season’s football team. But the conversation tended toward the intolerably boring, so he started spending more and more of his lunch periods in the library working on a draft of his first musical, [_You Can Dance If You Want To_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pOq4hyoX9g&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W&index=40) _: The Could-Have-Been Life of Lady Di._ The inspiration for the play was a tidbit Kurt had read in one of his magazines about the Princess of Wales’ childhood dream to be a ballet dancer. Although she had both athleticism and a strong sense of rhythm and musicality, once she hit adolescence her teachers told her that she was simply too tall to dance. She would throw of the aesthetics of any pairing she was in and, besides, male dancers would have a hard time carrying her.

He was working on the scene where Diana starts her own dance studio when he sensed someone hovering next to him. He looked up as a mellifluous voice said, “Do you mind if I share this table with you?”

It was Mercedes Jones, a girl he recognized from when he used to hover outside of show choir practice waiting for Rachel. Mercedes was usually dancing in the background behind Rachel, and he’d overheard a few animated exchanges between her and Mr. Schuester about the fact that she had yet to get a solo. Kurt and Mercedes had said “hi” a few times after rehearsals, but whenever the conversation started getting interesting, Rachel would start going on about how she and Kurt _must_ get going _now_ because she needed to start her dance exercises at 5 p.m. sharp. Kurt sensed there was some sort of arch rivalry going on between the two of them, at least from Rachel’s side, and Kurt could understand why; he’d heard Mercedes at the schoolwide talent show the year before and her voice was phenomenal. Rachel was amazing because she had the range and phrasing of Barbra Streisand; Mercedes was amazing because she sounded like no one Kurt had ever heard before.

“Of course you may,” he said in his most gentlemanly manner. But then he had an even better idea. _I’ll show Rachel._ He got out of his chair and pulled the open seat out for Mercedes. “Madame, if you will.”

“Damn, you have class.” Her smile was so big it took up half her face.  

“Just trying to make up for the hellacious manners of the rest of the student population,” he said as she sat down and he pushed the chair in.

“Well, if anyone can do that single-handedly, it would be you.”

Kurt felt his own smile spreading.

Neither of them did much work after that. Mercedes noticed the score that Kurt was working on so he told her all about it (except for the bit about much of it being based on his own experiences as a boy being told he couldn’t do things because he was too high-voiced/girly/faggy). She’d never heard of Di’s aspirations to be a ballet dancer, but she could relate. “Man, that is the story of my life. I try out for every solo at show choir when Mr. Schuester bothers to have auditions, but he always says, ‘Good work, but you just don’t have the right sound for the part.’ And since all the parts end up going to that skinny white ex-girlfriend of yours, I’m pretty sure I’m never going to have ‘the right look.’”

“She’s half-black, actually.” Apparently he still hadn’t broken the habit of coming to Rachel’s defense.

Mercedes’ eyes popped open wide. “You serious?”

Kurt nodded. “Her dad’s black.”

“Huh. Is she trying to keep it a secret? All she ever talks about is being Jewish.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, Mr. Schuester thinks she’s white and pretty and sounds just like Barbra Streisand, so that’s what counts. Must be nice to pass.”

The turn of the conversation was making Kurt feel a little queasy, and he didn’t really want to talk about Rachel anymore, anyway. So he changed the subject. “Well, maybe you can be in my musical.”

Mercedes eyed him suspiciously. “You have a part for voluptuous black lady in a play about ballet?’

“Um, well, actually, I thought … maybe you could play Princess Di?”

“Are you wack?”

“No. I’ve heard you sing. You have an incredible voice.”

“Yeah, but I’m not white, and I sure ain’t got the body of a ballet dancer.”

“But –” Maybe it was a stupid idea, or if he was being somehow offensive. But Kurt had said it, so he might as well plow on. “That’s kind of the whole point of the play. We should have the chance to pursue our dreams even when people think we fit the mold for those dreams. As long as you’re willing to do the work, it shouldn’t matter what you look like.”

Mercedes leaned back in her chair and didn’t say anything for a few moment. She seemed to be appraising him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Deadly.”

Another long silence. And then, slowly, a smug smile grew on Mercedes’ face. “Can this musical of yours rise to my level of talent?”

“That, and then some.”

She laughed – a sweet, melodious laugh that garnered a look of approbation from the librarian. “You’re something else, Kurt Hummel.”

“Does that mean I’ve found my leading lady?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

* * *

Kurt didn’t qualify to perform at the first few gymnastics meets, but that was okay. He was learning that his body was capable of some pretty amazing things, and being sore all the time was a negligible price to pay for developing some really ripped abs.

He enjoyed the meets, anyway. There were lots of gorgeous gymnasts to ogle (though he tried to keep his ogling subtle by only staring during a routine and keeping his glances short whenever a boy was off the floor), and watching the more experienced gymnasts helped him improve his technique.

In late March, Coach Tanaka finally let him compete at the lowest level in a meet with Dalton Boys’ Academy. It was their first competition with that school, and Kurt didn’t win his category on either of his routines – which kind of sucked, until he reminded himself that he had no designs on becoming a professional gymnast and most of his point deductions had been for adding non-regulation flair to his movements on the parallel and horizontal bars.

He completely forgot his disappointment when the next category of competitors went up and he recognized a familiar face on the tumbling mat.

His heart did a little non-regulation pirouette.

It was the first time that Kurt had seen Blaine since that one encounter in the video store last summer. He’d studiously avoided the Video Station for the rest of the summer, and by the time he got the gumption to return, Blaine was apparently no longer working there. Which was only further proof that Blaine was a WASPy rich kid who only got a job to keep himself entertained in the summer, not because he actually needed it, and that he was probably terribly stuck-up and boring and not worth Kurt’s attention at all.

But it was heard to stir up disdain for Blaine when the boy was in his sight, especially given that all Blaine had on was a tight navy tanktop that clung to the V of his torso and tiny little shorts that revealed enormous muscular thighs that would feel amazing wrapped around Kurt’s –

Fuck. Kurt was getting a hard-on. In gymnastics tights. Kurt leaned forward and planted his elbows on his knees, calling out to the teammate who was near the water cooler, “Hey, Rutherford, can you get me a water while you’re up?”

When Rutherford came back with a cup of water, Kurt thanked him and as surreptitiously as possible set it next to his balls. It was, thankfully, freezing as fuck.

Despite the risk entailed in watching Blaine, Kurt looked back toward the tumbling mat. Blaine was in the middle of his routine now, transitioning from a series of handsprings into a mid-air somersault. His landing was solid with no hint of a hop before he turned back into reverse handsprings. His form was great, but the thing that struck Kurt was the rhythm and musicality in his performance that, despite the absence of music, made it feel almost like dance. It was mesmerizing to watch, and would have been mesmerizing even if the body performing the routine hadn’t been so incredibly scrumptious.

Kurt stared freely because he knew no one would question it; even the straight boys would have to admit that the routine was beautiful.

Well, he stared freely until Blaine did the splits, whereupon Kurt’s cock started misbehaving again and he had to look away and distract himself by picturing the most abominable outfits he’d seen the previous week. Given the new trends toward jelly shoes and shoulder pads bigger than the ones in his old football uniform, there were plenty to choose from.

* * *

Kurt didn’t purposely time his exit from the school building to coincide with the Dalton boys lining up outside their bus, but he didn’t exactly regret the coincidence. Most of the boys were facing away from him, looking toward the bus door; he felt safe scanning the group for Blaine’s compact little frame and Rock Hudson hair.

“Kurt Hummel!” There was a voice and the sound of footsteps slapping softly against the pavement behind him. Kurt spinned around.

It was Blaine, still in his tiny gym shorts. Thank goodness he at least had a baggy Dalton sweatshirt pulled on over his tank top. On his sockless feet were a light brown pair of docksiders.

Blaine came to a sudden stop a few feet away and held out his hand. “Blaine Anderson. You probably don’t remember me but I met you on my first day working at the Video Station and –”

“You remember my name?”

“Yeah, of course.” Blaine was still standing with his empty hand outstretched, and Kurt still hadn’t taken it.

Kurt jolted himself out of his shock and took Blaine’s hand, trying to remember to shake it and not just, you know, fondle it and gaze at it and explore the callouses on Blaine’s palm. “I didn’t realize it was so memorable.”

“No, it totally is. I mean, I try to remember all the customer’s names anyway, but yours was really easy because Kurt Von Trapp is like that kid in _The Sound of Music_ and that’s like one of my favorite movies of all time –”

“Mine, too.”

“Really? No way!” Alas, in his astonishment Blaine let go of Kurt’s hand.

“Way! I actually went as Kurt Von Trapp one Halloween when I was little. But no one understood my costume even though I made my mother dress up like Maria. They just thought I was some random yodeler.”

“Oh my god that’s adorable!”

A voice came from over by the bus. “Anderson! Stop schmoozing and get over here.”

Blaine waved back. “Be there in a minute! There’s always time to build goodwill among our fellow sportsmen.” He turned back toward Kurt. “Sorry about that. I probably _should_ go. But it was nice seeing you again. Will you be at the state meet?”

“I don’t know. I guess it depends if we qualify.”

Blaine clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, I hope so. Then we’ll see each other again. You were really good on the bars, by the way.”

“You saw me?”

“Yeah. I recognized you as soon as I walked into the gym.”

Kurt’s stomach did a regulation backflip at that news.“Well, that’s nice of you to say, but I know I’m not that skilled. I’m at the lowest level that qualifies to compete, and just barely.”

Blaine shrugged. “You had an artistry about your routines, though. People seem to forget that it’s called ‘artistic gymnastics’ for a reason.”

Kurt took a deep breath and tried not to explode. “That’s quite a compliment coming from you. You were –”

“ANDERSON!” called some horrible, awful Dalton student who clearly had nothing better to do than get between Kurt and happiness.

Blaine clapped Kurt on the shoulder again. “I guess I really do have to go. It was good seeing you, Kurt Hummel!”

Kurt only let himself watch Blaine for a couple of paces before turning and heading to his car. If he’d watched for any longer, his eyes would have betrayed him to the entire Dalton boys’ gymnastics team.

When he got home, he really, really wished he’d asked for Blaine’s phone number. Which was stupid, because Blaine was probably just an incredibly nice straight guy. Kurt really didn’t need any more of those in his life. And if he _was_ gay?

That idea was probably more petrifying. Kurt honestly had no idea what he would do if he actually met another gay boy. Become friends? Fall in love? And then what? Sex was out of the question; Kurt could fantasize about it all he wanted, but actually doing it didn’t seem worth the risk. Even kissing was potentially deadly; earlier in the month Kurt had read an article about a man in California whose doctor said he’d caught AIDS from his wife’s saliva.

None of this stopped Kurt from looking up ‘Anderson,’ ‘Andersen’ and ‘Andersson’ in the local phone book. But that didn’t help him to find Blaine; there were two entire columns of people who shared his last name.

Fate was telling Kurt to give up.

* * *

The next month, another article appeared in the paper about the man from California. Four sentences buried in the back of the front section explained that he didn’t have the AIDS virus at all; his doctor had diagnosed him based on symptoms and ignored blood test results from a government lab.

So kissing was apparently okay again. But that probably wasn’t a good enough reason to try to figure out which of the 40 listed phone numbers belonged to Blaine Anderson’s family.

 

 


	11. 1985—Spring

**Spring 1985**

Kurt still wasn’t talking to Rachel, but he wasn’t friendless. He went over to Finn’s house every once in a while to play _Q*Bert_ and _Frogger_ on Finn’s Atari 2600, and sometimes Finn would come over for baking lessons. Kurt knew that the only reason Finn wanted to learn was so that he could make cookies for Rachel, but they never talked about it. As long as Finn remembered not to mention Rachel’s name, and as long as Kurt remembered to think of Finn as a brother and not as the boy who broke his heart, everything was fine. They both got better at it as the semester progressed.

Kurt was hanging out with Mercedes a lot, too. At first she came over to work on the musical with him, singing back some of the songs he’d written so he could figure out if they sounded any good outside his own head. That bled into doing homework together, which bled into getting together every time an ABC Afterschool Special was on, which bled into going to Breadstix together every time it advertised an all-you-can-eat spaghetti special. By April, they were calling each other day and night to gossip about people at their school and trade plans for conquering the world.

It was right after one of these phone calls with Mercedes that Kurt’s dad looked up from his newspaper and asked, “Are you and Mercedes going out?”

Kurt had been about to sit down on the couch next to his father, but now he just stood next to the phone console, frozen. “No. Why would you think that?”

Burt shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because you’re always taking her to Breadstix and her eyes get all starry when she looks at you.”

“We go Dutch at Breadstix. And her eyes do not get all starry when she looks at me.”

“Mmm. Of course.”

“A girl and a guy can be friends without _dating_ , Dad.”

“I know that. Does Mercedes, though?”

Kurt looked petulantly at his feet. “Why can’t a guy just hang out with a girl without her wanting ... _things_ from him? I just want to have friends. I’m not ready to plan my wedding.”

Burt folded his newspaper and set it in his lap. “Kurt, you’ve been planning weddings since you were four years old.”

Kurt rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. I’m not ready to plan a _real_ wedding.” _Never will be._ The words were on the tip of his tongue, but he just couldn’t get his teeth to open far enough that he could say them.

* * *

Kurt watched Mercedes for signals but … honestly, he wasn’t seeing any. Still, he thought he should check just to make sure. “We’re friends, right?” Kurt said one afternoon as they were trying out some revisions he’d made to the _You Can Dance If You Want To_ score.

Mercedes looked up from the sheet music. “Of course we are. Don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Mercedes reached for his hand and squeezed it, looking at him with a mix of gentleness and scrutiny that was unnerving. “Why? Is there something you wanted to tell me?”

“No.” Kurt turned back toward the keyboard. “I just wanted to make sure we were in agreement on that.”

He took the answer at face value, so he wasn’t at all alarmed in early April when, as they walking with linked arms to lunch, Mercedes turned to him and said, “Have you thought about whether you’re going to prom?”

“Of course I’ve thought about going to prom. I’ve been planning possible outfits for years. But you know we can’t go, right? It’s only for juniors and seniors.”

“Actually,” Mercedes grinned, “sophomores can go too if they’ve played a varsity sport. And since you were on the football team last fall –”

“Oh my god. That only gives me a month to sew a tuxedo.” Kurt clasped his hand over the one Mercedes had crooked around his elbow.

“You could always rent one –”

“Pfft. I’m not going to spend the most important night of my life in some polyester abomination that multitudes of unhygienic teenage boys have worn before me. And _you –_ ” Kurt stopped dead in his tracks and spun around to appraise Mercedes. He tapped his forefinger against his cheek and hummed to himself.

“What about me?”

“Don’t you dare go out and buy one of those Gunne Sax monstrosities. I want you to wear something absolutely unique.”

“Um, I’m pretty sure they don’t have them in my size, anyway.”

“Just as well. Because I am going to make you something spectacular!” He grabbed her by both hands, needing something to anchor himself so he didn’t float away on excitement.

“So … you want me to go to prom? With you?”

“Oh – I just assumed. Sorry. But yes, if you would. It would be an honor to have the most elegant lady in all of Lima agree to accompany me.”

Mercedes ducked her head and smiled. “Of course I will, Kurt.”

* * *

Kurt made a black tux with tails, dove-grey waistcoat and a purple bowtie sewn from the same fabric he used to make Mercedes’ gown. The ribbons down the side of his pants were deep plum, only noticeable as not being black on close inspection or if the light hit them just right. He used the same ribbons as trim around Mercedes’ waist and sleeves.

“Aren’t you, like, not supposed to see me in my prom dress until prom?” she said when she came over for the fitting.

“I think that’s weddings, Mercedes.”

He unveiled the dress. She gasped and covered her mouth. “Oh, Kurt. It’s beautiful. But … I don’t think I’m going to fit into it.”

“Of course you are. I followed your measurements.”

“But dresses for a girl like me aren’t supposed to have a waist.”

Kurt cocked one eyebrow. “Honey, _you_ have a waist. Your dress should, too. I hate those tents they make for girls your size. It’s a shame to hide a gorgeous body like yours. When I become a designer, I’m going to make clothes for everybody.”

“I thought you were headed for Broadway.”

“There’s no rule saying I can’t do both. And if there is –” He gave a light shrug. “I’ll just have to break it.”

Later – after Mercedes had tried it on and Kurt began clapping because he really _had_ done great work and she just looked _fabulous_ (of course she did, she had an innate fabulosity about her, but the dress really brought it out and Kurt had no qualms about being proud of that), and while he was pinning the hem – she looked down and said, “Do you really think I’m gorgeous?”

“Of course I d – _Ow.”_ Kurt had accidentally jabbed himself in the finger.

* * *

Prom was everything Kurt expected it to be: an opportunity to look fabulous with a fabulous-looking girl on his arm. Really, there was little chance of disappointment there.

Mercedes had dyed her hair with plum highlights, and along with the purple-and-yellow orchid corsage that Kurt had gotten her, it went wonderfully with her dress, his bowtie, and the single mauve rosebud she had pinned to Kurt’s lapel. They looked stunning together. Kurt enjoyed catching glimpses of their reflection in the mirrored wall of the ballroom, and he paid to have their pictures taken by the photographer in case the ones her dad had taken didn’t turn out.

The only real disappointment of the evening was spotting Rachel. She was wearing a dress from Jessica McClintock’s high-end line; it made her look like a kewpie doll drowning in lace and ruffles. Fortunately, Finn’s body was big enough to block Rachel from Kurt’s view most of the evening until, two songs before the last dance, she accosted him by the punch bowl.

Kurt was alone at the moment, having left Mercedes back on the dance floor with a peroxided blonde from the show choir whose name he could never remember. It was something simple and all-American, like _Chad_ or _Stan_ or _Sam_ or _Dan –_ the kind of name that was easily confused with a dozen others. Kurt was, in fact, trying to remember it when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

It was Rachel. “Kurt, can I have the next dance with you?”

“No!” His response was automatic and outraged.

"But Kurt, I miss you. So much. Hiram and LeRoy do, too.”

He would be lying if he said he didn’t feel a squeeze on his heart. But that made him even angrier. “Should have thought about that before you betrayed me.”

“But you’re still friends with Finn, and he did the same thing. Don’t you think you’re being a little sexist?”

Kurt took a sip of his drink. It tasted different than earlier – sweeter and … hotter, in a way. Not in temperature, but still, it warmed his throat when he swallowed. “Finn _apologized,_ Rachel. You never did.”

She crossed her arms. “And what do I have to apologize for, Kurt? We weren’t really even going out, it was all –”

“We’re not talking about this in public, Rachel.”

“But –”

“No. If you keep talking, you’ll have more than one thing to ask my forgiveness for when Yom Kippur rolls around.”

“Kurt!”

He turned away from her, chugging down the rest of his punch before crumpling the paper cup in his hand. “Have a good evening, Rachel.” He tossed it in the trash and walked away.

He tried to forget about Rachel, even though during the final dance to Simple Minds’ “[Don’t You (Forget About Me)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdqoNKCCt7A&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W)” she steered Finn over until they were in Kurt’s line of sight and kept mouthing the title line in his direction. Kurt looked away but didn’t turn around; that would have involved spinning Mercedes around, too, and he didn’t dare expose her to the maniac across the room. He ended up stepping on Mercedes’ toes a couple times, though – something he hadn’t done in partner-dancing since he was nine years old.

* * *

They left prom in a limo with two other guys from the gymnastics team and their dates. Matt kept going on about how they should all crash an after-prom party at some random junior’s house. “It’s supposed to be huge – no parents, plenty of booze! I heard they even got a DJ.”

Mercedes smiled politely and straightened her skirt. “No thanks. I have to get up to sing at church tomorrow.” One of the other girls demurred, too, and at first Kurt didn’t really have any interest, even though his dad had already okayed his announcement that he might sleep over at one of his teammates’ houses, perhaps in hopes that Kurt would lose his virginity to Mercedes and finally prove himself to be a normal teenage kid.

But by the time they got to Mercedes’ house, Kurt was feeling inexplicably more open to the idea. He’d been able to let go of Rachel’s douchewaddy behavior at prom; he suddenly felt light and playful. He gave his arm to Mercedes as she stepped out of the limo, and they skipped up to her porch like Dorothy and the Tin Man on the Yellow-Brick Road.

"I had a lovely evening, Kurt,” she said when they got to the front door. “You're quite the gentleman."

"Well thank you, my dear. You're quite the lady." He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of her fingers. She smiled and batted her eyes.

"Kurt," she said when he dropped her hand, "you can kiss me if you want."

"Oh." Kurt froze. Things suddenly did not feel so light. "I thought… I thought we were friends."

"We are. But we could be more than friends, too." She bit her lower lip. "If you wanted."

He looked at Mercedes. She was gorgeous. It wasn't just the dress or the way the purple highlights in her hair shone in the porch light. Her skin was absolutely flawless; her eyelashes long and lush; her eyes themselves a spectacular brown like polished ebony; her lips so full that anyone in their right mind should want to kiss them.

But he didn't want to.

"I –  I'm sorry, Mercedes."

She visibly deflated. "It's because I'm fat, isn't it?"

"No! God no! How could you even think that?"

She took a deep breath and jabbed her forefinger into his sternum. "Well it better not be because I'm black, or you are not the kind of guy I thought you were!"

"Mercedes, of course not!" The curtain in the front window parted an inch. Kurt lowered his voice. "Honestly."

"Well, there's got to be some reason. Because we get along really well and we understand each other and you sure _act_ like you're sweet on me. You're always telling me I'm pretty and fabulous, and we've been on five dates already –"

"We have?"

"Yeah, four at Breadstix and tonight at prom, and you _said_ you had a good time at all of them!"

"I _did_ , Mercedes.  I just – It's complicated."

"I’m not _stupid_ , Kurt. I can understand complicated things.”

Kurt chewed his bottom lip. "I'm …"

"You're what?"

"I'm –" He took a deep breath. He could do this. He could say this. Mercedes was good to him. She deserved to know. "I'm g–"

Mercedes stared at him, waiting.

He tried again. "I'm g–" But his mouth simply couldn't form the rest of the word. "I'm g-getting over Rachel still. I'm sorry."

"That _bitch!_ I saw her talking to you at the punchbowl."

"I – I'm sorry, Mercedes. If I could date anyone, it would be you. You’re beautiful and smart and if Russia dropped the bomb on us and I had to spend the rest of my life in a fallout shelter, I’d want you to be there with be. It’s just ... taking a lot longer than I expected to get over what happened."

"Yeah, well, I'm not Rachel and I am not going to cheat on you. You should know that by now."

"I do, Mercedes. But – I can't. I'm so sorry."

"Well, I am too!" She ripped the corsage off of her wrist and threw it at his chest.  "Sayonara, Kurt Hummel!"

The front door slammed loudly behind her.

"Well that didn't turn out the way I expected," Kurt mumbled to himself as he bent over to pick the battered corsage from the ground.

Kurt received a round of sympathetic pats on the back when he returned to the limo. "Dude, Mercedes was really spazzing over there. What the hell happened? You try to feel her up?"

Kurt shook his head. "I will never understand women."

"You still going to pass on the party? You could blow off a little steam…"

"Oh, what the hell. Why not?" He slapped his hand on the partition between the main cab and the driver. "Chauffeur, I want to get plastered. Take me with these hosers."

* * *

Kurt and his companions headed straight for the punch bowl as soon as they got to the party. It took them a while to find their way through the smoky haze and the squeeze of polyester-clad bodies. “Is this even alcoholic?” Kurt said after taking his first sip. “It tastes exactly like the stuff they were serving at prom.”

The guys he’d shared the limo with looked at each other and chuckled. “No doy. The punch at prom was spiked.”

“Oh.” Kurt wondered if he was already drunk. He downed two large cups and waited for the alcohol to reach his brain, passing the time by dancing with girls whose dates were too trashed to dance.

It hit halfway through “[Everybody Wants to Rule the World](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST86JM1RPl0&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W&index=46)”: a bittersweet feeling in his ribcage like falling in love, everything around him taking on a floating quality, and he could probably float too if he wanted – float high above all of them, fly up to the ceiling and bounce across it like a balloon until he was next to the patio doors. A breeze would blow through then and shoo him out the sliding glass doors, and he would be outside – out in the green-smelling air of spring, floating high toward the stars.

 _Stars._ He wanted to see them. He was going to be a star one day, and the wretched throng of talentless wannabes that filled this house – they were going to be stuck here in Lima in their rented suits and Gunne Sax dresses, wishing that they had the courage to be as free as Kurt Hummel.

Like the balloon of his imagination, Kurt drifted outside. There were a few kids out there – a group of girls chugging wine coolers on the deck, a couple of boys on lawn chairs passing a joint back and forth. He ignored all of them and headed toward the far end of the garden where it was dark and the noise of the party faded to a dull throb. He found a flat spot of lawn and lay down on his back to look at the stars – and when he saw how they sparkled against the sky, he was glad he was drunk, because he would never have looked at them like this sober. He would have been too preoccupied with his suit, worrying about tears and grass stains; but the alcohol had made him invincible, and it had made his clothing invincible, too.

 _Poor Kurt,_ he thought to himself. _You spend so much of your life in fear._

He watched the stars and tried to remember the stories he’d learned at summer camp about Hercules and Cassiopeia and Harriet Tubman and the Drinking Gourd. At some point he must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he was aware of was General Public’s [Tenderness](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04il74pijpY&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W&index=49) and a boy’s voice above him, saying quietly, “You okay?”

Kurt opened his eyes. The boy was crouching down next to him, looking slightly concerned but not overly worried. Kurt recognized the boy from the McKinley corridors and the locker room when, back in winter, hockey and gymnastics practices sometimes overlapped. He’d never let his eyes linger on the boy when he was getting changed, despite the temptation: he was tall and broad-shouldered like the men in the muscle mags Kurt used to shoplifted from the five-and-dime when he was nine. And – well, wasn’t that interesting? The boy’s face was lovelier than Kurt had been close enough to notice before, with brows that curved like a seagull’s wings and soft, expressive eyes whose color was indeterminate in the darkness. “I’m wonderful,” Kurt said. “The stars are spectacular. You should watch them with me.”

The boy laughed and ducked his head. “I’d love to, but I’m pretty sure the rental store charges for grass stains.”

“Puh-leeze.” Kurt reached up and rubbed the hem of the boy’s tuxedo jacket between his fingers. The boy didn’t flinch. “That’s definitely polyester. You couldn’t stain it if you tried.”

“And here I’ve been trying not to spill beer on it all night.” The boy laid himself onto the grass next to Kurt – well not exactly _next_ to him, but near enough that if Kurt reached out an arm he could touch the boy’s shoulder. There felt something intimate about it, if only because of the association Kurt had between watching the stars and his night with Michael all those years ago.

“Isn’t your date wondering where you are?” the boy said.

“No.” Kurt watched a satellite blinking past Ursa Minor. “She went home already. What about yours?”

The boy chuckled. “Definitely not.”

Kurt turned his head. The boy was still facing up at the sky, his profile all grey and blue curves in the darkness. “Why not?“ Kurt said.

The boy laughed again, his mouth falling open. “Um, ‘cause last I saw her she was making out on the couch with Azimio Adams.”

“Ow. Burn.”

“Not really.” The boy turned his head against the grass until he was facing Kurt. He was easier to see at this angle: the subtle shadow growing on his jaw; his boy-next-door smile; his strong, aquiline nose;  and those fine eyes. “I mean, yeah, I guess technically, but –” He looked back at the sky and, after a long pause, whispered, “She’s not really my type.”

They didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Kurt turned back toward the stars and tried to find the Milky Way. The noise coming from the house wasn’t as loud as it had been when he’d first come out here. The music was still blaring, but the hubbub of voices had faded. He propped himself up on his elbows. The girls were no longer on the deck; the pot-smoking boys had disappeared. As far as Kurt could surmise, he and the boy next to him were the only two people in the world. “Party dying down?” he said.

The boy sat up. “A little. It’s after two already.”

“Silly children. Don’t they know that the night is still young?” Kurt looked at the boy pensively. “I don’t have curfew. I should probably do something irresponsible and reckless.”

The boy laughed again. He looked like he might be blushing, but it was hard to tell when it was so dark. “Yeah. Like what?”

“I don’t know. What do juvenile delinquents do these days?”

“Um, I don’t know. Egg houses?”

“That sounds tedious and messy.”

“It is, actually.”

“How do you know? Are _you_ a delinquent?” Kurt leaned in close to the boy as he said it, both a challenge and a flirtation. It was dangerous – Kurt _knew_ it was dangerous – but he didn’t care. He wanted to see what he could get away with, how far he could go. He wanted to fly.

The boy didn’t lean away. In fact, he did the opposite, shifting incrementally closer to Kurt as he spoke. “On Halloween. It’s stupid, though. I mean, it’s kind of fun while you do it because you get this high from getting away with something. But then the next day when you have to walk by the house, it just looks awful and you feel bad.”

Kurt raised one eyebrow. It was, he knew, one of his most alluring looks. He’d practiced it in the mirror more times than he could count. “I’d kind of like to get away with something, though. I never really do.”

The boy laughed, loud and hearty and gorgeously light, like music floating up to the sky. “What the hell are you talking about? You broke Noah Puckerman’s nose.”

“Wait. You know about that?” Kurt was so surprised he reached out and squeezed the boy’s forearm without meaning to. Well, mostly without meaning to.

“Dude, _everyone_ knows about that. It was, like, the coolest thing that happened last year. I haven’t been tossed in the dumpster since it happened.” He clapped his hand over Kurt’s and didn’t let go.

Kurt eyed the boy from head to toe. “How’d he get _you_ in the dumpster? You’re bigger than he is.”

The boy shrugged. “I wasn’t last year. Anyway, he always had the element of surprise.”

Their hands were still touching, and the boy was looking at him, smiling sweetly and perhaps a bit drunkenly, and Kurt’s heart was hammering in his chest. Kurt realized he didn’t know the boy’s name. “I’m Kurt,” he said.

“I know,” the boy said. “Everyone knows. You’re kind of hard to miss.”

Kurt’s stomach went cold. “Fuck you.” He snatched his hand away from the boy.

“No, I – I meant that in a good way. You’re - you’re –” The boy reached for Kurt’s hand, but Kurt wouldn’t budge. He folded his arms across his chest.

“I’m what?”

“You’re a good-looking guy. The best in the school, really.”

Any positive feelings that Kurt had ever had after a declaration of affection from Rachel or Mercedes paled in comparison to the victory lap that his heart was doing now. “What’s your name?”

“Dave.”

Kurt unfolded his arms and gave Dave his hand. “You’re a little drunk, aren’t you, Dave?”

Dave nodded. “No duh. Aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Kurt said, hopping up and tugging Dave with him by their joined hands, “and I think I know what we should do.”

* * *

The side door to the garage was unlocked; Kurt locked it behind them when they were both inside. It was dark, but the safety lights on the outside of the garage cast through the high windows so that Kurt could make out the Lincoln Town Car in front of them. Kurt glanced at the ceiling. The owners hadn’t installed an automatic opener for the overhang door; If anyone tried to open it from the outside, a key in the lock and the jangling of the handle would give them enough warning to escape out the side.

“What are we doing in here?” Dave whispered. They were still holding hands.

 _We’re going to make out, you doofus,_ Kurt wanted to say, but he chickened out. He let go of Dave’s hand and tested the driver’s side door; it was unlocked. “I’m going to show you how to hotwire a car.”

Dave’s mouth fell open. “Dude, we can’t steal this car when we’re drunk! I signed the [SADD Contract for Life](http://www.nytimes.com/movies/movie/10890/Contract-for-Life-The-S-A-D-D-Story/overview).”

“We’re not going to steal it. I just want to turn the radio on.” Kurt rubbed Dave’s shoulder in reassurance, letting it linger longer than he would usually dare.

“Um, why?”

“Because we can? I told you I wanted to do something reckless tonight.” Kurt looked up at Dave, daring him to look away. But Dave didn’t. He kept looking at Kurt, and even though there still wasn’t enough light to tell the color of his eyes, Kurt could see the desire in them as plain as words on paper.

He wondered what his own eyes were saying – and they flickered then, down to Dave’s lips and jaw and chest, further to his cummerbund and then back up, across his shoulders and up his neck and over the curve of his ear. There was so much body to this boy, and he knew if he asked for it, it could be his.

He didn’t exactly ask. He reached up and tugged at the bowtie that was already coming loose at Dave’s neck. “C’mere,” he said, and Dave did.

* * *

They were in the back of the car, jackets and waistcoat off and the buttons of their shirts coming undone, one by one. Kurt had only meant for it to be a kiss, but once it started he developed new and bigger plans, and the car was just sitting there, begging to be occupied – so they went in. He crawled onto Dave’s lap and tugged his shirt loose from the cummerbund and – skin, he wanted to feel skin against the palms of his hands and against his chest. And maybe that was going too fast – he really didn’t know, he was awfully confused about _what_ counted as sex when it was between guys, other than what he’d blushingly read about in _Newsweek_ magazine – but up until now he’d thought that he would never have anything, ever, and now here was a boy’s body moving under him, a boy’s hands on his back and his ass, a boy’s lips against his lips and tongue against his tongue, and then against his neck and _Christ on a cracker,_ necking with Rachel had never felt like this.

Kurt might have made some ungodly noises, but he didn’t really care because that just seemed to make Dave kiss him harder, to touch him more, and – _oh –_ that was Dave’s hard-on pressing against his thigh, Kurt had done that to another boy, holy crap he was not alone in this world _at all_.

“God, Kurt, I wanna touch you. Let me touch you.” Given that Dave’s hands were already roaming all over Kurt’s back and thighs, Kurt was pretty sure that Dave meant a very exact place.

And Kurt probably would have let him if a police siren hadn’t started blaring at that very moment.

They startled apart – well, as far apart as they could get considering that Kurt was in Dave’s lap and they were both crammed into the back seat of a car.

A sudden loud commotion came from the direction of the house, and then pouring out of it – windows and doors flying open, footsteps scurrying across the planks of the back deck and through the grass, kids calling to each other across the lawn, more footsteps pounding against the sidewalk.

“Shit. The party’s been busted!”

Kurt rolled off Dave as soon as the words were out of his mouth, grabbing for the clothes that were strewn around the car. He shoved Dave’s jacket in his face and rolled out of the backseat. “We go out separately. You take the side, I’ll wait a minute and go under the garage door.”

“You sure?” Dave said, pulling on his jacket as he stepped out of the car.

“It might be a little suspicious if we come running out of the garage together with our shirts half-undone ”

“Good point.” Dave buttoned up his placket and made his way toward the door. He paused before opening it. “Thanks. For everything. It was – You’re a good kisser.”

Despite the panic beating in his chest, Kurt couldn’t help but smile. “You’re not too shabby yourself. Now get the fuck out of here before the cops breathalyze you.”

“Yeah. See you around.” And then he was gone.

* * *

Kurt woke up Sunday morning with a headache and the distinct conviction that there was fur growing on his tongue. He hadn’t thought he’d drunk _that_ much – but he must have, if he felt like this. And if he’d – _oh my god._ The impressions of skin and boy and body that had woken him from sleep throughout the night weren’t dreams; they were memories. Kurt had gotten so drunk that he’d made out with a virtual stranger in the back of a Lincoln Town Car.

Most remarkably, he’d lived to tell the tale. Not that he _could_ tell anyone.

His shoved his face in his pillow. Kurt was _not_ that kind of guy. He was careful and calculating, not to mention terrified of the gay plague. Plus, he believed in big-time romance: long courtships and subtle flirtations, the will-they-won’t-they suspense of every good romantic comedy. He wanted the slow build-up of friendship before the first kiss. He wanted dependability and the solid assurance of life with a best friend. He’d known that about himself ever since he’d seen Hiram and LeRoy cooking brunch together on his tenth birthday, even if he hadn’t understood what it meant back then.

He wanted love, not cheap one-night stands. He ought to be ashamed of himself.

Except the feeling in the pit of his stomach wasn’t shame. It was light and fluttering like wingbeats. It was the same feeling he’d had when he did a handstand on top of the jungle gym for the first time.

It was pride.

“What time did you get in last night?” his father asked when Kurt arrived in the kitchen 15 minutes later. “I thought you were gonna sleep at Matt Rutherford’s.”

Kurt opened the cupboard and reached for the box of Cheerios. It was already noon, but he didn’t think his stomach could handle anything more complicated than a bowl of cereal right now. “Change in plans,” Kurt said without looking up at his father. He got out a bowl and then a carton of milk from the refrigerator. “He wanted to go to some after-prom party.”

“And you didn’t?” Burt looked at him dubiously.

Kurt shrugged his shoulders instead of answering. Technically, it wasn’t a lie. “Mercedes and I had a bit of a misunderstanding. It put a damper on the evening.” He brought his cereal over to the table and sat next to his dad. It was better than sitting across from him, which would require him to occasionally look him in the eye. He wasn’t quite ready for that.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. You should be happy though. You were right. She thought we were dating.”

Burt set the Sunday comics on the table. “I’m not gonna gloat about that if it ruined your evening, kid.”

“No, it didn’t. The thing that ruined my evening was Rachel stalking me at prom.”

“What? She’s not still with Finn?”

“Yeah, she is. She just wants to be friends again.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

Kurt stirred his Cheerios around in the milk. “I don’t know. I’m still mad at her.”

“Do you still care about her, though?”

“Of course I do. She’s been my best friend for almost half my life. But I just –” Kurt sighed. “It’s complicated.”

“I still don’t get why you forgave Finn so quickly but you’ve been holding a grudge against Rachel for – what is it? Four months now? Five? What’s that about?”

 _I was in love with him. I wasn’t in love with Rachel._ He stuffed a spoonful of Cheerios in his mouth and muttered, “Finn apologized,” around it.

“Well, maybe Rachel’s ready to apologize.”

Kurt didn’t answer. He kept stuffing Cheerios into his mouth until all that was left in the bowl was a shallow pool of milk. He stared at it, then looked up. “Dad?”

“What, buddy?”

“Why are girls so much trouble when you’re not even in love with them?”

“Beats me,” Burt said. “Sure would be easier if you could date guys, wouldn’t it?”

Kurt’s heart stopped. And then it started again, running at a gallop even faster than the night before in the Lincoln Town Car. So much heat rushed into his ears that he wouldn’t have been surprised if they burst into flame.

Kurt drank the rest of the milk from the bowl, peering sideways at his dad as he did so. Burt was nonchalantly looking down at the comics as if he hadn’t said anything at all.

It must have been a joke. Or Kurt was hearing things. Were auditory hallucinations a common hangover symptom?

So Kurt didn’t respond. He just picked up his bowl and set it in the sink. “I’ll come back and wash it after my shower.”

Burt still didn’t look up. “Okay, kiddo.”

It _would_ be easier if he could date guys, though, Kurt thought as he got into the shower. Maybe then he could walk up to Dave tomorrow and say, “Hey, I had a great time making out with you on Saturday night but I don’t even know your last name. How about we go to Fat Jack’s Pizza sometime for dinner and talk about our favorite movies before we stick our tongues in each other’s mouths again?”

Because honestly, he _did_ kind of want to stick his tongue in Dave’s mouth again. Or maybe not Dave’s mouth in particular, but the mouth of any cute guy who would reciprocate. And since Dave had been the only guy Kurt had met in the last 6 years to reciprocate, well …

But guys couldn’t date. They couldn’t go to The Creamery and sit across from each other, drinking from two straws in the same float; they couldn’t hold hands at the movies; they couldn’t dance at prom. So what was Kurt supposed to do? Keep getting drunk at parties and hope that Dave or some other guy would come falling into his lap again (or vice versa, but Kurt wasn’t going to be technical about it right now)? That was a dangerously stupid idea. He was lucky not to have gotten the crap beaten out of him the night before. He could see that now.

Kurt wouldn’t get drunk like that again.

And Dave?

Kurt would just have to pretend it hadn’t happened. Next time he saw Dave in the hall, he’d acknowledge him with nothing more than a masculine, “Yo.” The gossip about Kurt had died down since the beginning of the year, but there were still guys who suspected. Kurt wasn’t about to feed the rumor mills by smiling at a boy from outside his social circles in public.

* * *

When Kurt opened his locker on Monday, he found a note from Rachel perched on top of his pre-algebra textbook:

_Dear Kurt,_

_I realize that prom was probably not the best time or place to try to mend our friendship. I'm sorry if I made your special evening less enjoyable. (By the way, you and Mercedes looked amazing. You made her dress, didn’t you? It was gorgeous.)_

_Please let me know when would be a good time for us to talk. I will try to be patient, but I do want you to know that I am eager to be on good terms again. My life is not the same without you. I am sorry it took so long for me to realize it._

_Yours,  
Rachel_

Kurt had braced himself for some sort of approach from Rachel. But he'd expected her pursuit to border on bullying: chasing him down the halls, hounding him between classes, stalking him in the parking lot. When she had a goal in mind, she was resolute to the point of obstinance. So that's what he was prepared to deal with when he walked into school that morning. He was ready for glares and tantrums and yelling; he was ready for hostility.

He was not ready for kindness.

For the first time in four-and-a-half months, he remembered what he loved about Rachel, and his chest ached from the emptiness.

* * *

Mercedes avoided Kurt for most of the week, and he avoided Rachel. He spent his lunch periods in the library working on his Lady Di play, but everything he wrote was clunky and off. He’d jot down a few lines, read over them, and scratch them out. By the end of the week, he’d crossed out more lines than he’d written.

He didn’t see Dave much except from afar, and whenever he caught sight of him Kurt would quickly look away, busying himself with searching for something in his bookbag or staring at a poster on the wall until the danger of eye contact had passed. Kurt took to wearing light blue socks again, and they seemed to help.

And then Friday came. Kurt was walking down the hall with Tina Cohen-Chang talking about the best place to buy Doc Martens when he looked up and suddenly Dave was just a few steps away, walking in the opposite direction with a couple other members of the hockey team.

Kurt made eye contact before he even realized who he was looking at, and that the boy was looking back at him. And then Kurt’s heart went into his throat because _wow_ Dave’s eyes were even finer in the daytime light, the irises all golden-brown and – Kurt blinked. There was nothing to do now but to act cool about it. He gave Dave a quick, manly nod and mumbled, “Hey,” before turning back to Tina to offer his opinion on the virtues of oxblood versus black leather.

After gymnastics practice that afternoon, Kurt found another note in his locker. It wasn't from Rachel this time:

_Pansy,_

_Don’t ever talk to me in front of other people again. You know what people say about you and I don’t need them saying it about me. I am not your fag and if you tell anyone I am, I will do a lot worse than egg your house. Burn this after you read it because if anyone finds it or you tell anyone about it, you are dead meat._

_– You Know Who_

_P.S. I do not make empty threats._

* * *

Kurt had thought about killing himself before, but it was usually more of an abstract wish for relief from life as he knew it than any specific plan.

That afternoon, it was different. He thought about it on the entire drive home, and as he sorted the mail, and as he sat in the kitchen gorging himself on shortbread cookies and chocolate milk. _This is my last meal_ , he thought numbly. _At least it tastes good._

He brushed the crumbs off the counter, washed his dishes and set them in the dishrack. His dad wasn’t due home for a couple hours; he had time.

Kurt wanted something clean and dignified. Blood was out of the question; it would be too much of a shock for his dad to come home to. So he went into the medicine cabinet and grabbed what he could find there: cough syrup, Tylenol, dramamine, and Pepto-Bismol. He brought the bottles to his room and set them on his vanity, then opened the window to let the smell of the lilacs in on the breeze. That would be a good way to die, with the smell of spring all around him.

Then he got out a piece of stationery and thought about how to explain himself to his dad.

He hadn’t even put down the first word when he heard his name through the window. “Kurt? Are you home?” It was Mercedes’ voice. “Come on now. Don’t hide from me. I can see your window’s open.”

He got out of the chair and walked toward the window on automatic. Mercedes was standing on the lawn, her hands on her hips. “Most people knock,” he shouted.

“I _did_ knock. You didn’t answer.”

Had she? He hadn’t heard her. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to. “What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Now’s not a good time.”

“Dude. I walked all the way here from my house. It’s getting hot out. You could at least offer me a glass of water.”

“You had all week at school to talk to me.”

“Yeah, but I wanted to talk to you in private.”

The old lady next door stepped out of her front door. “You kids aren’t talking in private right now. The whole neighborhood can hear you.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Landries,” Kurt called out. “I’ll let her in.” He sighed heavily as he turned from the window and gathered the medicine bottles from the vanity to shove under his bed, then trudged down the stairs to open the door.

Mercedes started talking before Kurt even had the door all the way open. She was standing on the porch, staring at the door frame, her words coming out at a carefully measured pace. "Look, Kurt. I want to apologize. I’ve thought about it a lot this week and I realized I was just seeing what I wanted to see. You didn’t do anything wrong. I get lonely sometimes and think I should have a boyfriend already ..." She looked up at his face and her eyes went wide. “Kurt, you look _awful_.”

“Do I?” For perhaps the first time in his life, he really didn’t care.

She reached up and pressed her hand to his forehead. “You’re whiter than a Klansman’s bedsheets. And cold, too. You feeling okay?”

It was such a simple question, but it made everything unravel. His hands started trembling. He shook his head. He tried to say “no,” but what came out was a gasping sob and the words, “I never asked to be gay.”

* * *

“Kurt, why didn’t you tell me before?” They were on the couch; Mercedes had practically carried him there after he’d collapsed on her shoulder. “You had to have known I’d be your friend no matter what.”

He was calmer now. Mercedes had brought him tissues and a glass of water. Drinking it had helped him stop gulping for air. “How could I know? You’re a Christian. Jerry Falwell –”

“Don’t even think of finishing that sentence. Jerry Falwell is a Southern Baptist, not a Christian.”

“I didn’t mean to start a theological debate.”

“All I’m saying is that just because someone says ‘Jesus’ doesn’t mean they know him. The God I know is a God of love. He loves you as much as he loves me, and you being how you are isn’t going to change that. And it’s not going to change the way I feel about you.”

“Mercedes, I can’t date you –”

“That’s not what I meant. I want to keep being your friend is all. And it makes me so sad to think about you facing this all alone.”

“Well, Rachel knows.”

“But you’re not talking to Rachel.” Mercedes’ eyebrows furrowed. “Wait – why do you care that she cheated on you? Doesn’t this all mean you were never in love with her in the first place?”

Kurt took a deep breath. He might as well tell Mercedes. She already knew the worst of it and she hadn’t left yet. “I liked Finn.”

“You mean like –”

“Yes.”

“Oh. I really am clueless. Is he ... like you, then?”

Kurt shook his head. “No. God no. I just … Rachel knew how I felt, but she went after him anyway. Or at least, I thought she knew.”

“But … wouldn’t you have done the same thing? I mean, if you both liked him but Finn only liked you in that way?”

The possibility had never occurred to Kurt. Loving someone who’s able to love you back – especially after the note in his locker this afternoon, it was almost inconceivable. Hiram and LeRoy were a fluke. If they weren’t, he’d know more people like them. But still, if Kurt had had the chance – “Yeah. I would have.”

“And that’s totally understandable.” Mercedes squeezed Kurt’s hand and winked. “Finn _is_ kind of cute, for someone as tall as the abominable snowman. And if you like somebody and they like you back, then why shouldn’t you be together?”

“You don’t think it’s disgusting?”

“Oh, Kurt.” She leaned against his shoulder and sighed. “Loving another person is never disgusting.”

* * *

Kurt realized now he could forgive Rachel for falling in love with Finn Hudson – if it was that simple. He still wasn’t sure. A lot of it still felt like she’d taken Finn just to spite him; that she’d been taking revenge on Kurt for not being able to love her. _You hurt me; now I’ll hurt you._

But he was willing to hear her out. Whatever she had to say couldn’t make him feel any worse than the note Dave had left in his locker. He would survive it.

“I’m going to Rachel’s,” Kurt announced solemnly on Saturday afternoon as his father crouched on the front porch next to the vacuum cleaner. It was lying on its side like a patient on an operating table. Kurt’s dad was the surgeon with his tools and a new replacement belt all lined up in a neat row on the bedside.

He looked up, his mouth half-open, his eyebrows knit together in that way they always did when there was a conceivable chance that Kurt was shitting him. “You are?”

“Might as well.” Kurt lifted and dropped one shoulder, trying to affect a casual shrug. “She was my best friend for six years. Maybe I should stop treating her like _persona non grata.”_

“Huh.” His dad looked back down at the vacuum cleaner and picked up his screwdriver. “I have no idea what that means, but I think I catch your drift. That Italian?”

“Latin. We learned it in English class. I thought it had a certain _je ne sais quois_ , so I wrote it down.”

The corners of Burt’s eyes twitched up in a smile. “Now you’re just showing off, kid.”

“You know what they say. ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it.’” Kurt turned and skipped down the porch steps. Fuck Dave. Kurt had it and he was going to flaunt it to the whole world, and Dave was just a chubby old ham hock who could spend the rest of his sad, pathetic life being ordinary and –

“Kurt?” his dad’s voice broke through his brooding reverie.

Kurt turned around. Burt was standing up now, leaning against the porch railing. It looked like a photograph, with his blue chambray shirt complementing the green porch paint so nicely, and the sun slanting through the balusters to paint diagonal stripes onto his jean legs. Kurt wished he had a camera. “Yeah?” Kurt called back.

“Good luck. I hope it works out.”

For the first time, the full force of what Kurt had almost done the afternoon before hit him. _I almost missed this._ He blinked. “Thanks, Dad. I love you.”

Burt’s mouth curled up into a smile. “I love you, too.”

* * *

“Kurt!” Hiram shouted in surprise when he opened the door. “It’s nice to see you again.” He appeared to mean it, too; he was smiling, and Hiram was terrible at faking smiles.

“Is Rachel here?”

“No. She and LeRoy are at the mall. Should I tell her you dropped by?”

“Um –” Kurt looked down at his white Capezios. “Actually, are you busy?”

“Well I was just –” Hiram stopped himself. He was scrutinizing Kurt’s face in a way that should probably make him feel uncomfortable and a little too transparent. But Kurt had hit the bottom of uncomfortable yesterday afternoon; he felt strangely invulnerable now. He looked back at Hiram and waited until Hiram finally shook his head. “No, not with anything important. What do you need?”

“I wanted to ask you … How did you survive high school?”

* * *

Kurt felt lighter when he returned home, swinging his arms happily and singing “[Happy Days Are Here Again](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA8OmK3qslw&index=68&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W)” to himself.

His dad was in the living room, running the vacuum cleaner that he’d been fixing earlier that day. He turned it off. “It go okay with Rachel?”

Kurt startled, but only slightly. He’d forgotten all about Rachel. “Um, actually she wasn’t home. But Hiram was making mandel bread and let me be the taster.”

Burt smiled. “Maybe the two of you could open up a kosher bakery some day.”

“Not sure that Lima is the right market for kosher. And I thought _you_ were the businessman.” Kurt winked and skipped up the stairs to his room, picking up his Barbra Streisand tune where he’d left off.

 _Altogether shout it now_  
     _There's no one_  
 _Who can doubt it now_  
 _So let's tell the world about it now_  
 _Happy days are here again_  
 _Your cares and troubles are gone_  
 _There'll be no more from now on_  
 _From –_

Kurt lost track of the lyrics when he saw his bed. Stacked neatly on top of it was a pile of brochures, the top one emblazoned with the title “BE GOOD IN BED” in bold black letters.

He pushed it aside. The flyer directly beneath it “What Gay and Bisexual Men Need to Know About AIDS.”

Okay. This was, um, strange, but maybe Mercedes was super-resourceful and concerned – if kind of a bimbette for leaving all this stuff right where his dad could see it.  

Oh. His father. Kurt closed his eyes and started mumbling to a god he didn’t believe in  to _please please please_ not have let his father come upstairs while he was out of the house. _Please._

Kurt opened his eyes again and delved further into the pile to find a photo of two naked men embracing and the words “If you really love him … Wear Rubbers – Every Time!” Seriously? Mercedes had gotten _this_ for him? She might have been more liberal than he’d expected, but he would have thought for sure she’d draw the line at naked guys, even tastefully photographed, attractive black men. She had mentioned her church having a health ministry, but was this really what they were handing out at church these days?

But the one that really got Kurt hyperventilating was the last booklet, with line drawings of cocks and hands and asses and tongues and mouths, along with step-by-step instructions for making rolling on a condom a sexy part of foreplay.

He closed his eyes and dropped the brochure on the bed. Then he opened his eyes., picked up the whole stack, and shoved it under his mattress.

“Dad?” Kurt called down the stairs. “Has Mercedes been over here?”

“Nope.”

“Or … um … anyone else?”

“Nope. Just me.”

Kurt started slowly down the stairs. Why, he had no idea. There was nothing good that could come of looking into his father’s face right now.  “But … someone left something on my bed.”

His dad was already at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at him with almost as much terror as Kurt felt. “I did,” he said.

Kurt grabbed onto the banister with one hand, pulled at the hem of his bolero jacket with the other. “But … why?”

“Because I want to be a good father.” Burt’s voice broke. “And I don’t know if you are … that way, but _if_ you are – I love you, and I don’t want to lose you too soon like I lost your mom.”

Kurt sank down onto the step. He looked at his dad, and blinked, and looked away. He closed his eyes.

Burt climbed the stairs and sat down next to him, putting a hand on Kurt’s shaking shoulder. “Say something, Kurt?”

Kurt couldn’t. His heart was about to gallop out of his chest, and all the mandel bread and tea he’d had was asking for permission to come back up from his stomach, and a wall of tears pressed against his eyes.

“Did I do wrong?” Burt said.

Kurt shook his head slowly, and opened his eyes. Tears spilled out of them. Kurt didn’t try to stop them. “No,” he said, glancing at his dad’s worried green eyes. “You did right.”

And then his dad was crying, too, sobbing like a lost child. “You will always be my son. I will never stop loving you. Got it?”

But Kurt couldn’t answer; he was crying like a little boy but he didn’t care. He didn’t feel ashamed at all.

He leaned into his father’s shoulder and his father held him close, held and rocked him and chanted _I love you_ over and over again. “I’m so sorry it took me so long, Kurt. I’m sorry I haven’t been there when you needed me. I’m just … so, so sorry.”

* * *

When he could breathe again, Kurt asked, “Have you – How long have you known?”

“Um … that’s complicated.”

Kurt bit his bottom lip and smiled sardonically. “Try me. I’ll bet you 50 cents it’s not as complicated for you as it was for me.”

His father laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Um … It was after you and Rachel broke up. It was – I heard you singing one of those _Yentl_ songs and it wasn’t a break-up song. It was about loving someone you could never have and it just … clicked, in my head. That it was … Finn you were upset about, not her.”

“A song? Really? That’s how you figured it out?”

“Yup. I mean … I think I’ve known for longer than that. But that was when I finally put a name to it. And then … it felt like it was something I’d known about you forever, but was just afraid to put a name to. … And anyway, you and Rachel were always so close. I kept telling myself just because you hate football didn’t mean you couldn’t like girls.”

“That’s what I kept telling myself, too. And I _do_ like girls. Just not the way I should.” Kurt laughed bitterly. “It’s not your fault, you know. That I’m this way. Or mom’s. I just –”

“Hey, look at me, kid.”

Kurt eyed him hesitantly.

“You’re not a disappointment, Kurt. You could never be.”

“But I’m –  I can’t fall in love with _girls_ , dad. I’m not going to get married, and you’re never going to have grandkids, and people think I’m a freak, and _AIDS_ , and –” Kurt was talking faster by the word, breathing himself into a panic.

“ _I_ don’t think you’re a freak, Kurt. You’re just – the boy you’ve always been.”

“But there’s hardly anyone like me, Dad. And the ones who are – they’re dying.”

“And people are figuring out how to keep them from dying, and they’re figuring out how not to get sick in the first place, and _you’re_ not gonna get sick because you’re going to read those brochures I got for you and do everything they say because you are the most important person in my life and I am _not_ going to lose you the way I lost your mother. Got it?”

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

Kurt eyed his dad warily before breaking into a smile. “That’s the nicest threat I’ve ever received in my life.”

* * *

“So, I take it Mercedes knows?”

Kurt and his dad were at the kitchen table, eating TV dinners because both of them had been too exhausted from the afternoon conversation to cook.

Kurt stuffed a piece of apple cobbler in his mouth. “Knows what?”

“Um, about you. Being .. you know. Gay.”

A crumb caught in Kurt’s throat and he almost choked. “Wow. Is this all we’re ever going to talk about from now on?”

“No. But I’m your dad, and I want to make sure you’re getting the support that you need. If you need it.”

Kurt put his fork down. “Yeah. She knows. I told her yesterday.”

“And you two are okay?”

“Yeah. She was … fantastic, actually.”

“Well, sometimes people are bigger than you expect.” Burt popped a slice of Salisbury steak in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Anyone else know?”

“Rachel.”

“Was that part of why the two of you broke up?”

“Um … indirectly? She knew for a while before that, though. She figured it out when we went to see _Yentl.”_

“That was … a long time ago.”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.”

“I’m sorry, Dad. I wasn’t trying to hide it from you exactly. I just … I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“No. I get it. There’s plenty of stuff I never told my parents, believe me.”

“Like?”

“Maybe I’ll tell you when you’re 30.” Burt took a sip of beer. “So Rachel was okay with it, too?”

Kurt shrugged. “Theoretically. I think she had a hard time with the part about me not being in love with her, though. And I think … maybe I’m finally starting to sympathize with that a little.” He couldn’t believe he was saying all of this to his dad, and yet – it also felt long overdue.

“Well, you are quite the catch.” The corner of Burt’s lip curled into a smirk. “You are a Hummel man, after all.”

“Yeah, well.” Kurt tried to swallow down his bitterness. “I don’t think there’s many guys like me at McKinley. And even if there are, it’s not like we’re all wearing earrings in our right ears so we can spot each other.”

“What’s earrings got to do with it? Isn’t everybody wearing them now?”

“Um, yeah, but straight guys wear them in their left ear, or both ears. Piercings in the right ear are apparently only for … guys who aren’t ‘right.’ Or so I’ve been told. I’ve never seen a guy with a pierced right ear, so I haven’t been able to confirm the rumor.”

“Huh. Go figure. You gonna get one yourself?”

Kurt made his best effort at an eyeroll, but it was a little difficult because he’d just started in on the chicken parmesan and was trying to chew at the same time. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“What? You’re pretty fashion-forward as it is.” Burt looked down at his tray, stirred the peas and carrots around with his fork.

“Yeah, but I’m not gonna put a target on my back that says, ‘Kick me.’”

“You get crap at school? Is that what the Noah Puckerman stuff was about?”

“Sort of. But … Puck and I are okay now. And ... no one says it to my face anymore, anyway.”

“I wish you’d told me.”

Kurt shrugged. “I’m used to dealing with it on my own.”

“You don’t have to, though.”

“Dad –” Kurt picked at his mashed potatoes. “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you? I mean, about me?”

“No, Kurt. Of course not. It’s no one’s business to tell but your own.”

“Not even Aunt Mildred? Promise me you won’t tell Aunt Mildred.”

“What’s the point of telling your Aunt Mildred? She’s drunk half the time anyway. She’d probably forget.”

“Well, if you need to talk about it with anyone … Rachel’s dad knows. And her uncle. Rachel told them.”

“You okay with that?”

Kurt nodded. “They’re cool.”

“Are they … a couple?” Burt asked.

“It wouldn’t be my place to tell even if I knew.” Kurt stabbed his fork into his green beans and lifted them to his mouth. “Why? Would it be a problem if they were?”

“No. It would be kind of a relief, actually, knowing you had someone else to talk to.”

Burt fell silent then, and Kurt resumed his eating in earnest, and when his dad put down his fork before even touching his blueberry muffin, Kurt ate that too.

Kurt was just about to stand up to clear the table when Burt opened his mouth with, “You read those brochures yet?”

The tips of Kurt’s ears immediately caught fire. “If I did I’m not discussing them with you.”

“Hey. We did the birds and the bees talk and it didn’t kill either of us, if I remember correctly.”

“Oh god.” Kurt covered his eyes with his hands. He knew it was infantile, but he couldn’t stop himself. Seriously, he’d barely been able to get through those brochures by himself, they’d been so … eye-opening. There was no way in hell he could talk about them with his father, the man who taught him how to wipe his butt and cleaned his knees after bike accidents and … ugh. Kurt shivered.

He felt his dad’s hand on his elbow, shaking it lightly. “Look at me, Kurt. You’re not three years old anymore. I can’t protect you from everything bad in the world. So the only thing I can do is make sure you know how to protect yourself. So we’re gonna get through this together, whether either of us like it or not.”

Kurt removed his hands from his face and folded them in his lap, but he didn’t answer, and he didn’t look his dad in the eye. He couldn’t look at any part of his dad. He just stared at his empty foil tray and cursed himself for being so transparently gay that even his dad could figure it out.

“Okay,” Burt started. “So those brochures did a pretty good job of describing the mechanics –”

Kurt’s jaw dropped so fast it almost smacked him in the chest. “You _read_ them?”

“I read most of them. How else am I supposed to have the sex talk with you?”

“But that’s – that’s –” Kurt wanted to say _like reading my diary,_ except that might give Burt the wrong idea since Kurt had never actually _done_ any of that stuff, but still – “It’s private.”

“Kurt, none of it is stuff I haven’t heard of before. You think straight people don’t do those things too? Sex between men and women isn’t all about making babies either, you know.”

_This is mortifying. this is absolutely mortifying. Please don’t tell me anything about your sex life, I’m wearing light-blue socks today, you **can’t** –_

“Which is an excellent segue, actually. Because as much as I’d like to tell you to wait to have sex until you’re 30 –”

“Oh, I’m planning to.”

“– I also know you’re a teenage boy, and teenage boys can get carried away. And if you find someone … I want you to be safe. I’ll get you a box of condoms –”

“You – Excuse me?”

“Calm down. I am not saying you should go out and have sex, Kurt.” Burt pushed his tray to the side and leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “What I really want you to do is wait for someone you love and who loves you back with all their heart. Someone who would give the world for you. Someone you can … connect with. Because that’s what sex does, Kurt. It connects you to someone else and it … it changes you and it changes the way you see the other person. And I want those changes to be things you can feel good about. You’re my son, and if you can’t get married, I at least want you to have that.”

The words comforted and wounded Kurt at the same time – comforted, because his father loved him enough to let go of his own dream of seeing Kurt get married one day; but wounded because Kurt had _also_ often dreamed that he would be married one day. Even after he knew it was impossible, he still wanted it. He just … wanted to be married to a guy. Maybe they couldn’t have the wedding, but the marriage? LeRoy and Hiram had that. Maybe Kurt could have it, too, no matter how bleak the prospects looked at the moment.

“I do too, Dad.”

“Good. But your heart’s not the only thing you need to protect. You need to protect your body, too. I want you to use condoms for … well, you know. The stuff that the brochures say you should use condoms for. Even if you decide that you don’t have to be in love to have sex, I want you to take care of yourself and whoever you’re with.” Burt’s face was so open and vulnerable and so full of love, it was almost painful to look at. “Because you matter, Kurt. You matter to me and to your friends and I really, really hope you matter to yourself.”

Kurt’s father didn’t want him to die. His father knew what he was and he still wanted him to live, and be happy, and maybe even have a love of his own.

Kurt blinked back tears. “I promise. I’ll take care of myself.” _When I don’t feel like I’m worth it, I’ll do it for you._

His dad let out a small smile. “Okay. I think I’ve said what I need to say. Any questions?”

“Absolutely not.”

Burt half-laughed as he scooted his chair back from the table. “I’ll put the box of condoms on your vanity. You ever need a new one, just put a paperclip on my checkbook, okay? No questions asked. As far as I’m concerned, you’re using them as water balloons.”

Oh. That was … not something he really wanted to discuss with his father at all. Kurt jumped up and cleared their foil trays from the table without looking at his dad. “I think – I think I’m going to throw these in the trash, and then I’m going to go upstairs and disappear into a foggy haze of embarrassment.”

“Go for it, kid.”

Something kept Kurt from fleeing upstairs though. It stopped him in the kitchen doorway, turned him around, made him look his father in the eye. “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

* * *

Kurt looked for Rachel before the bell rang on Monday morning, but she must have already come and gone from her locker by the time he got there. So he got out a piece of notepaper and wrote in his best handwriting.

_Dear Rachel,_

_I miss you too._

_Your friend,  
Kurt_

He folded it and shoved it through the air vent in her locker door.

* * *

“Kurt.” Rachel was waiting outside the boys’ locker room when gymnastics practice let out that afternoon.

“Brave of you to stand so close to the locker room door, Miss Berry,” Kurt said when he caught sight of her. “It takes most people years of training to withstand the odors emanating from that room.”

She smiled hesitantly, her lips pressed together. “What can I say? I’m a strong woman.”

“That you are. Would I be too much of a male chauvinist if I offered you a ride home?”

“Not at all. Friends do such things for each other, regardless of sex.”

They didn’t say anything out on the way to the car, but when he crooked his elbow, she got the hint and hooked her hand through it. It felt nice, being close to her again.

They were quiet on the ride to her place, too, only exchanging a few pleasantries about the gorgeous spring weather and the competitions each of them was preparing for the following weekend. He didn’t want to say anything real until he could look her in the eye. It had been much too long since he’d done that.

“Kurt,” she said, once they were in her driveway and he’d cut the motor off. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, and you’re right. I do have something to apologize for.” She glanced down at her hands, folded neatly in her lap. “I _do_ care about Finn – a lot. But I was also mad at you, and the way I went about everything with Finn in the beginning – I think I was trying to get my revenge on you in a way. For –” Tears clung to her lower eyelashes, waiting to fall. “I really did think we were soulmates, Kurt.”

He reached for her hand, felt her small palm turn to meet his. “Maybe we are, Rachel. Just not in that way.”

“I want you to be my friend, Kurt. Can we be friends again?”

“Only if you let me apologize, too.”

She let out a tearful, relieved laugh. Her mouth was open and her eyes were bright, just like the first time she smiled at him that winter in the playground. “What on earth could you possibly need to apologize for?”

“Do I detect sarcasm?”

“I learned it from the best.” She squeezed his hand.

He took a deep breath. “It was wrong of me to try to keep you from Finn. I … I get so lonely sometimes, Rachel, and it makes me so angry, and I – I took that out on you. I didn’t care if I made you as unhappy as I was, and that’s … That’s awful, Rachel. That’s an awful thing to do to someone – especially a friend.”

“Oh, sweetie.” The tears were streaming down her face in neat little lines. “I wish you weren’t so lonely. I wish … I wish there were more people you could be yourself around.”

“There are,” he said, swallowing nervously although he had no idea why. “I came out to my dad. And Mercedes. I have them now, too.”

“Really? They’re … okay?”

“They’re amazing. I never expected –” He started to blink back his own tears and then remembered – it was okay. He was safe here. He could let them go.

Her eyes lit with joy and she was squeezing the life out of his hand in excitement. “I’m so happy for you, Kurt. I just – Can I hug you?”

“Of course you can,” he said. “You’re my best friend.”

* * *

The statewide gymnastics meet was the following weekend. Kurt was so nervous about his routines that they were already half-way to Columbus before he remembered that Blaine Anderson would be there – and that gave him a whole other ball of wax to fret about. By the time they arrived at the meet, Kurt was in a near-tizzy.

After checking in and finding out the schedule – Kurt wouldn’t be on for at least an hour – he wandered around the building until he found a girl’s room far enough from the gymnasium that it was unlikely any of the spectators would be using it.

From his bag, he took out a small bottle of moisturizer and some face scrub he’d whipped up at home using pulverized orange peels, lavender flowers and honey. His skin wasn’t in strict need of a facial at the moment, but his brain was; the monotony of the movements combined with the scent of the cleanser almost never failed to have a calming effect on him.

And it did help. The anxiety began to slough away like useless layers of dead skin. Kurt didn’t need to worry about his routines; he’d practiced them again and again, and his handsprings were impeccable. And he certainly didn’t need to panic over Blaine; there was no point in getting worked up about impressing a boy who couldn’t be impressed by him in _that way_ anyhow.

By the time Kurt was done applying his moisturizer, he was in a state of perfect serenity.

And then he heard footsteps and a jaunty whistle just outside the bathroom door.

If Kurt had been thinking, he would have gone into one of the stalls to hide. But he wasn’t thinking. He froze like a statue, his startled face reflecting back at himself in the mirror.

The door swung wide open, and in stepped Blaine Anderson. He was in his uniform already: the scandalous navy-blue shorts with red piping and a form-fitting navy blue tank top with the Dalton crest emblazoned upon the chest.

At least Blaine’s arms were covered by a zip-up sweatshirt, so Kurt didn’t have to worry about drooling directly on the boy’s biceps in case he accidentally fell forward.

Which actually felt like it could happen at any moment, Kurt was so dazzled by the apparition.

“Oh!” Blaine said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think anybody would be in here.”

“Me neither,” said Kurt.

“I can –” Blaine gestured toward the door. “Sorry. I can go. Leave you alone.” He started to make a half-turn – and how did he manage to make a simple, unconscious step look like dancing? – when Kurt interrupted.

“You don’t have to. I was just … washing my face. I –” He ducked and turned his head, focusing his eyes on the sink handle. “Sometimes it just helps me get my focus if I spend a little time by myself before a big event.”

“But if you need time alone –”

“I’m done. I’ve had enough.” Which wasn’t strictly true – but given the choice between being alone and hanging out in the girl’s bathroom with Blaine, Kurt was inclined to choose the latter.

“If you’re sure.”

“I am. Unless you wanted to be alone?” And as soon as the words escaped Kurt’s mouth, he realized they were the only possible explanation for this strange event. Without waiting for Blaine to answer, he began throwing his things back in his gym bag.

“No,” Blaine said. “I just … um … actually? The smell of urinal cakes makes me nervous. And the ones in this building are, like, _toxic._ I’m … kind of in the habit of sneaking into girls’ rooms.”

“Oh.” Probably for more than one reason, too, Kurt thought.

“No, not like that!” Blaine’s cheeks turned slightly pink. “I’m not, like, a peeping Tom or something. I just … no one uses the girls’ rooms at Dalton unless we’re having a mixer, so maybe I’m not as careful about walking into them as I should be.”

Kurt gave a half-shrug that he hoped came across as carefree and, perhaps, just the littlest bit alluring. “It’s okay. Do you need to –?” He glanced as subtly as he could toward the stalls.

“Oh, yeah. I kind of forgot. I need to pee. That’s why I’m here.” Blaine nodded firmly and clapped his hands together. “Wait for me? In case a girl comes in? You can, like, warn her or something?”

“Sure.”

Blaine disappeared into the center stall; Kurt stood there with his butt against the edge of the sink and his arms folded across his chest, trying not to listen to the sound of Blaine’s pee hitting the water. He started playing a [Judy Garland tune](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_9ERvUUWmE&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W) in his head to drown it out.

 _What a day this has been_  
    What a rare mood I'm in  
    Why, it's almost like being in love

_There's a smile on my face_  
_For the whole human race  
_ _Why, it's almost like being in love_

_All the music of life seems to be  
    Like a bell that is ringing for me_

When Blaine came skipping out of the stall while harmonizing the words, Kurt realized to his horror that he’d been singing it aloud the whole time:

 _And from the way that I feel_  
    When that bell starts to peal  
    I could tell I was falling  
    I would swear I was falling  
    Why it's almost like being in love

The smile on Blaine’s face spread from ear to ear. “So who are you singing along to in your head? Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, [Gene Kelly](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qYCDEsersw&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W) or Jo Stafford?” He turned the water on in the sink next to Kurt’s and began scrubbing his hands.

Kurt didn’t fight very hard to suppress his own smile. “Well, I’m not usually one to turn my nose up at _Brigadoon_ , but for me it’s always Judy.”

“She’s never a bad choice. I take no umbrage on Gene Kelly’s behalf.”

“Oh? Are you his agent? Or the president of his fanclub?”

Blaine reached for a paper towel. “Not _officially_ the president of his fan club.”

Kurt raised an eyebrow. “Can you dance like him?”

“No, but I try.”

“Do you? I’d like to see you work that into a floor routine.” It occurred to Kurt he might on the verge of flirting. He surreptitiously pinched the inside of his forearm to snap himself back into reason.

But Blaine seemed to take no notice of Kurt’s coquetry. He just opened his eyes wide as he tossed his paper towel into the trash, and fifty kinds of excitement seemed to flash across his face all at once. “I wish we could dance in our floor routines! And use music. It’s not fair that the girls get all the fun, is it?”

“No. Not really.” It wasn’t fair. And the other thing that wasn’t fair was how charming Blaine was. Kurt’s heart was doing these crazy swooning dives in his chest and he couldn’t keep his eyelashes from their incessant batting and – oh god. He was the most transparent dork on the planet _for a straight boy._

Thankfully, Blaine was the most oblivious straight boy on the planet, because he just kept smiling back at Kurt and didn’t seem creeped out at all. “If you like dancing, though,” Blaine said, ducking his head. “My show choir is having a party next weekend. You could come, if you want to.”

Kurt’s mind had such a clear image of Blaine dancing a crowd of navy-clad boys that he felt almost as if it were there, the beat thrumming through his thighs and the pull of Blaine’s hand on his hand and the other on his waist and the humid press of bodies all around them –

Kurt clicked the back of his shoes together to transport himself back to reality. He tried to think of something relevant to say other than _Touch me._ Oh, yes, Blaine had mentioned a show choir. “Dalton has a show choir?”

“Yeah. The Warblers.”

“Like the bird? That’s cute.” _You’re cute._ Oh, Kurt really needed to stop being such a ridiculously hormonal dork.

Blaine ducked his head and smiled, all his top teeth showing. “Well, I didn’t name us. We’ve been around for, like, 60 years.”

“Still. I like it.” Kurt curled his hands together in a tight ball to keep from reaching out and nudging Blaine on the chin. “I didn’t know you could have all-male show choirs. Do you … dance together?”

“Well, not _together_. We do group dancing. It used to be more of a glee club before I got to Dalton, but they added dancing a few years ago so we could compete in show choir competitions. ”

“Cool,” Kurt said, then mentally kicked himself for saying something so teenagerish and non-erudite. He wrung his hands together. “I’m sure you’re good, especially if you put anything in from your floor routine. And you have a good voice. It’s … rich.”

“Thanks.” Blaine dragged a finger (shyly?) back and forth along the edge of the sink. “That means a lot from from someone with a voice like yours.”

Kurt cringed. “Are you – Are you making fun of me?”

Blaine’s face twisted with confusion. “No! I – you have a really fantastic voice, Kurt. Phenomenal. I know guys in my choir who would kill to sing like you. Why would I kid about something like that?”

“I don’t know.” Kurt looked at the tile floor. “It’s just … I tried out for McKinley’s show choir and I didn’t get in.”

Blaine’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding me.”

Kurt shook his head.

Such sympathy overcame Blaine’s features a little like that Kurt had the urge to tell him it wasn’t really a big deal. But it was. Even saying it now made Kurt feel a little like throwing up.

“That’s – That’s awful, Kurt. The director clearly doesn’t know what he’s doing.” Blaine looked up toward the ceiling as if trying to remember something. “Oh, yeah. I remember now. We competed against them once. Yeah, the director could definitely improve. He only had one couple leading all the songs in the set.”

“Yup. That would be my ex-girlfriend Rachel and my friend Finn.” As soon as Kurt spoke the words, he regretted it. Now Blaine was going to think he was straight. Then he had to remind himself that he _wanted_ Blaine to think he was straight. So he threw in a gratuitous, “My prom date was one of the doowoppers in the background. The black girl with the amazing voice? I don’t know if you would have heard her, though.”

“I do remember her. I talked to her a little bit backstage. Mercedes, right? She’s pretty.” Something like a frown crept across Blaine’s lips as he spoke, but it turned into a smile so fast Kurt wondered if he’d been seeing right. Was – was Blaine disappointed? Maybe … maybe he didn’t want Kurt to have a girlfriend?

Kurt bit back the sudden, stupid urge to tell Blaine he was gay. (What was wrong with his brain today? He was seriously going to give himself mental whiplash.) Instead, he blurted out, “She’s not my girlfriend though. We just went to prom as friends.”  

Blaine looked at the tiled floor, opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, then closed it. He opened it again.

“What?” Kurt said.

“Do you –” Blaine pursed his lips. “Nevermind. I was about to ask you something personal, which is totally inappropriate because I’ve known you for like a combined total of 10 minutes.

Kurt didn’t blink. “Ask me.”

“You sure?” Blaine looked up at Kurt then, something heavy and weighted behind his eyes.

“Yeah,” Kurt said. Or _tried_ to say. It came out more like a gasp. He became acutely aware of how close they were, leaning against two adjacent sinks.

“Do you … want her to be your girlfriend?”

“No.” It felt like the most significant word Kurt had ever uttered. “I love her, but … no. She’s like a sister to me.” And then it occurred to him that he might be interpreting the situation all wrong. “Wait. You don’t want to ask her out, do you?”

It was adorable, the way that Blaine’s face squinched up when he smiled and ducked his head. “No. I was just … wondering.” He cleared his throat and stood up straight. “Anyway, I guess I’m done peeing so I should leave you alone to psych yourself up.”

Oh yeah. The gymnastics meet. Somehow Kurt had forgotten all about that. His stomach immediately reconfigured itself into tight, intractable knots and his armpits went hotter than Death Valley. “Blaine?” he said, holding onto the sink and trying not to double over from panic..

“Yeah?”

“Has anyone ever literally died during their routine?”

Blaine scrunched his eyebrows together and put his (oh god perfect wonderful _real)_ hand on Kurt’s shoulder. “Are you nervous?”

“Please don’t judge me.” Kurt worried his hands together. “This is the first time I’ve been to a state championship. Hell, it’s my first year _doing gymnastics._ I have this nightmare that I’m going to forget my routine, or I’m doing a handspring but then the floor disappears and there’s nothing for me to land on, or I’m on the parallel bars and they keep turning into uneven bars.”

Blaine looked at him, pursing his lips the same way he had before when he’d hesitated asking Kurt about Mercedes. There was something oddly giddy about it, and the light seemed to be moving in his eyes the way it would on the surface of a river – though clearly it couldn’t be, because the only light in this bathroom was from the dull overhead fluorescent tubes, and nothing about institutional lighting could create such sparkle.

Kurt wondered is Blaine was holding back laughter. Oddly, he wasn’t offended at all. It made him feel … happy, somehow. “Okay,” Kurt said, suppressing a smile. “You can judge me.”

Blaine clasped his hands behind his back, swinging side-to-side and grinning like the Cheshire cat. “You’re amazing, you know that?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a really good artist and athlete. You have this … I don’t know. This energy in your routines. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Kurt rolled his eyes, but that didn’t keep him from blushing. “You’ve only seen me compete once. And if you remember, I didn’t get a ribbon.”

“That’s all I had to see. And I still stand by my assessment that the judges didn’t know what they were doing.”

“Um … thank you?”

“Kurt Hummel, the only people that are going to be dying at this meet are the people watching your routine. Because you are going to kill this thing.”

“You haven’t seen me practice.”

Blaine shrugged. “Anyone in their first year of gymnastics who does as well as you did at that other meet – they’re bound to get better and better. I have a feeling about you.”

“A feeling?” Kurt dared, intentionally flirting now.

Blaine laughed like a bubbling brook and walked toward the door. “I also have a feeling that I might be late for the pommel horse if I stay here any longer. See you later, Kurt Hummel?”

“See you later, Blaine Anderson.” Kurt gave an inane wave as Blaine walked out the door. And maybe, just maybe, he bit his fist and let out a very, very quiet squeal when he was sure the coast was clear.

* * *

Kurt dumped his bag on the gym floor and sat on the bleachers a couple feet away from Matt.

“Did I miss anything?”

“Nah.” Matt shook his head. “Unless watching me fall off the pommel horse is your idea of a good time.”

“Actually, it is.”

Matt chuckled. “Well then you missed everything. Where’d you disappear to?”

“Just going over my routines.”

They turned to watch the floor. Blaine was over on the other side of the gymnasium with his team, hopping on both feet and shaking out his shoulders to psych himself up. Then he started breathing in these deep, cheek-puffing breaths and rolling his head from side to side – and spotted Kurt staring at him. He smiled and raised his hand in a happy wave.

Kurt felt like an absolute doofus for being caught in the act, but there was nothing to do but wave back.

Matt elbowed him in the ribs.

“Ow!” Kurt punched Matt’s arm. “What was that for, dude?”

“Being friendly with the competition.”

“Pfft. He worked at my video store last summer. It’s polite to say ‘hi’ to people you know. And good sportsmanship.” Kurt rubbed his side. “Way to injure me right before a competition, douche.”

Matt slapped him on the back. “Don’t be such a pansy. You’re fine.”

Matt’s tone was venomless, so Kurt let the taunt roll off his back. Anyway, it was usually better just to insult a guy back. “Yeah, yeah, but only because you’re a 97-pound weakling who couldn’t hurt me if he tried.”

“Fuck you,” Matt answered, but there was a smile on his face.

Even though Kurt was sure it was all harmless ribbing, he made sure not to look Blaine’s way again until Blaine went up to the pommel horse. Then Kurt was free to stare; none of his teammates were on any of the other stations, and everyone was watching _someone_. It wasn’t weird to admire another guy’s routine or try to learn from it – even if the other gymnasts didn’t appreciate the ripples in Blaine’s biceps and the way he spread his legs mid-swing quite as much as Kurt did.

There was a beauty to the way that Blaine moved, and an undeniable rhythm that Kurt might have started singing in to if he hadn’t been surrounded by people. When Blaine held his legs together, the line of his body was so graceful – a gorgeous long line from head to toe, uninterrupted except for the soft swell of his ass.

Kurt didn’t clap when Blaine was done – the pommel horse was almost on the other side of the gymnasium and there were other guys on the floor still doing their routines. But when Blaine was done hugging his teammates, he turned around and smiles right at Kurt. Kurt gave him a thumbs up.

Despite the distraction of watching Blaine on and off throughout the day, Kurt was calm and focused for his routines. Time slowed down enough for him to make each move as precisely as he needed to, without adding excessive flair that the judges might interpret as sloppiness. His grasp did weaken a couple of times on the parallel bars, and he went three seconds over on the horizontal bar, but he never lost anything completely and was always able to walk away as if nothing had been amiss.

His last category of the day was the floor routine. Despite looking so simple, tumbling was the most challenging thing that Kurt had worked on all semester. He’d had to unlearn, incremental movement by incremental movement, the sprawled and slipshod way he’d been doing cartwheels and somersaults and splits since the age of 5. It was a lot to unlearn. But he’d managed to make his movements simpler and cleaner week by week, and had been making improvements at an even faster pace in the past couple months, since the nicer weather meant he could put in extra hours of tumbling practice in the backyard. He liked to rehearse with his boombox playing in the background, and that’s how he’d serendipitously found that the middle minute of Ethel Merman’s version of [Everything’s Coming Up Roses](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s62MrU8mHx4&index=74&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W) was the perfect accompaniment to his routine. It kept him on good time and helped him remember what he was supposed to be doing. He’d ended up dubbing just that part of the song onto a blank tape and rehearsing to it habitually at home. It became such second nature that when he’d practice at school, the song played automatically in his head.

Kurt stood at the corner of the mat and waited for the buzzer to go off. He forgot about Blaine, forgot about his teammates, forgot to worry that the mat might vanish from beneath him. The judges disappeared from his mind. It was just him and the mat and his body, and the music that was about to begin in his head.

As soon as the buzzer signaled the start of his time, Ethel Merman began to sing in his head: _You'll be swell! You'll be great!_ _Gonna have the whole world on a plate!_ And his body agreed. He’d done the routine so often that it felt … not quite easy, but as simple and instinctive as falling in love.

He finished with a series of back handsprings as Ethel Merman belted out _Honey, everything's coming up roses for me and for you!_ , executing them so far beyond his expectations that he felt giddy bordering on delirious. He held it in, though, stoically raising his arms in a V to signal the routine’s end before crisply lowering them to his sides.

And then the sounds and the sights of the gym returned to his awareness, and he noticed Blaine standing among a small cluster of spectators at the side of the mat, holding out his chalk-covered hand for a high five. Kurt accepted compulsory slaps on the back from two of his teammates before making contact with Blaine’s hand.

“I told you you could do it,” Blaine said.

“We don’t even have my score yet.”

“Don’t need it. That was flawless.”

Kurt sucked in his bottom lip. “Shut up.”

“You have a tough time accepting praise, don’t you?”

Kurt raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I get praise all the time. From myself. It’s when other people praise me that I get thrown off. The hoi polloi tend not to appreciate my talents.”

“Am I part of the hoi polloi?”

“Apparently not.” A teammate nudged Kurt on the shoulder and mumbled something about going over to the horizontal bar to watch Matt Rutherford. Kurt turned back to Blaine. “See you at the ribbon ceremony? I assume you’ll be staying for that since you’ll win them all.”

Blaine tilted his head to the side and let out a toothy grin. “See you then.”

Kurt was astonished when it was announced that he’d placed second all-around for his level, given that his only goal for the day had been not to make a complete fool of himself. Blaine was first in the next level; Kurt might have clapped a little too enthusiastically for someone on a competing team, but he didn’t care. Wasn’t there a saying that good sportsmanship is next to godliness? If there wasn’t, there should be. Kurt felt almost as invincible as a god in that moment.

The feeling evaporated completely when Blaine walked up to him after the ceremony and handed him a cream-colored card printed in cursive typeface. “There’s the information for the Warblers’ party, if you decide you want to come. It’s next Saturday.”

Kurt glanced down at the invitation. It was printed in cursive typeface with the Dalton seal below. “Fancy invitations you guys put out,” he said. “Fancy party?”

Blaine laughed like liquid happiness. “No. We just have an elaborately equipped typing center. The party is normal: casual dress, music, movies, potato chips, beer – all that stuff. And we’ll probably break out in song since we’re a show choir. Extra drinks for anyone who volunteers to solo.”

Blaine poked Kurt playfully on the arm, but the effect was lost on him. He was too busy panicking at the mention of alcohol. “I might have to babysit,” he stammered – and that was a baldfaced lie, Kurt had never babysat in his life unless sitting next to your annoying younger cousins at Thanksgiving dinner counts as babysitting. “But if I don’t, I’ll see if I can make it.”

“Well, I hope you can.” Blaine patted him on the elbow. “Oh, and there’s a huge SADD chapter at our school, so there will be safe rides and everything.”

“Okay.” Kurt’s heart sank further. If he went to the party, he would freak out from nerves, and if he freaked out from nerves he would drink, and if he drank, he would surely end up making a pass at Blaine, and then … well. Making passes at boys never could go well in the long term whether they reciprocated or not, could it? He smiled sadly. “It was nice seeing you again.”

“You too, Kurt. You were spectacular as always.”

Kurt blushed in spite of himself. “Not even.”

“Even.” And with that, Blaine spun around and sauntered back to meld with the gaggle of Dalton boys at the back of the gym.

* * *

Kurt didn’t go to the party. He ended up staying home and watching an old Katharine Hepburn movie on UHF with his dad.

“You’re sulky tonight,” Burt remarked when the movie was over. “You didn’t like the movie?”

“Yeah, I did. I just …” Kurt crossed his arms over his chest. “Never mind.”

“I read in _Woman’s Day_ that when your teenager says, ‘never mind,’ it means they need to talk.”

“Since when do you read _Woman’s Day?”_

“Whenever someone leaves a copy in the waiting room. Where do you think I learned to cook?”

“ _The Joy of Cooking,_ like everybody else.”

“Well, that too. Anyway, what’s bugging you? And don’t tell me ‘nothing,’ because you look like someone stole all your Barbra Streisand albums.”

“Dad, you really don’t want to know.” Kurt let out a hefty, put-upon sigh.

“Oh.” A worried look crossed Burt’s face. “It’s a boy, huh?”

“I told you that you didn’t want to know.”

Burt leaned back in his recliner and crossed his ankle over his knee. “I have to admit I’m still getting used to this whole thing.”

It was such a simple thing for Burt to say, and truthful – Kurt knew this was hard for his dad without anything being said at all. But still, hearing the words spoken sent a sharp pain through Kurt’s heart. He shot up from the couch and headed toward the stairs, inconvenient tears pushing at his eyes. “Well, I’m _sorry_ this is such a _burden_ on you, Dad.”

There was no escaping, though. His father was two steps behind him, then one step, then right beside him at the bottom stair. “Stop it, Kurt. I’m trying here. You know that’s not what I mean.”

Kurt turned around. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just – I wish there was nothing to get used to. I wish I was normal.” Tears spilled out onto his cheeks.

“Hey, hey.” His father pulled him to his chest. “There’s nothing wrong with you, okay? There’s always been guys like you. I knew ‘em in high school. And guys I served with in the army, too. I just … I just never really paid attention because that’s what I was taught to do – ignore it. But I’m not gonna ignore you or let you think you’re less than, Kurt. Just be patient with me, okay? It took me a long time to learn how to be as stupid as I am. It’s gonna take me a while to unlearn it.”

“You’re not stupid, Dad.”

“Ignorant, then?”

Kurt let out a stifled laugh.

Burt patted Kurt on the back and let him go. “Now, do you want to tell me about this boy or not?”

Kurt sank down onto the stairs. “I don’t know. I know you’re trying, but I don’t know how you can help me.”

“Try me?” Burt sat next to him.

“Look. What did you used to do when you were my age and you liked a girl?”

“Ask her out.”

“Right. It’s not like – you didn’t have to worry that she wasn’t into boys, or that she’d be repulsed by you asking, or beat you up, or _worse,_ that she’d like you but then she’d freak out that she liked you and –” Kurt stopped himself before the words _threatened to kill you_ could leave his mouth. He’d already said more than he’d meant to. “It’s just, there’s no point, okay? I like a boy but there’s no point in talking about it because it’s not the same as liking a girl. Nothing good can come out of it.”

Burt moved his jaw subtlely back and forth like he was sucking on chew. “I don’t know about that. How long have Hiram and Rachel’s dad been together now?”

“Um ...” Kurt bit his lip nervously. “They’re not, um –"

“Kurt, let’s cut back on the bullshitting, okay? I know.”

“No you don’t. You’re just assuming, and when you assume you make an _ass_ out of _u_ and _m –”_

“I’m not assuming, Kurt. I talked with them this week. They told me.”

“Oh.”

“Yep.”

“Why – why’d you ask them?”

Burt shrugged. “I have to start learning somewhere. And I wanted to let them know that it was okay with me if you needed to talk with them about this stuff. I may be stupid, Kurt, but I’m not dumb enough to think I know everything.”

“You’re really determined to make my life awkward, aren’t you?”

“Seems to me like awkward is a good step up from miserable. Don’t you think?”

Kurt buried his chin in his hands. It was always a struggle to admit when his father was right. “I suppose.”

“Look, those two started dating before I even met your mother. That’s a long time to be with someone, Kurt. I know it’s gonna be tough for you, but it’s not hopeless.”

“Did they tell you the part where they didn’t talk to each other for years?”

“Yeah. But you don’t have to do that, kid. If you fall in love with someone and he loves you back – maybe you can’t go shouting it to the world –”

Kurt had a brain that made associations with song lyrics in even the most somber moments; “[Secret Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL87sHjXlVU&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W)” immediately started playing in his head. “Like Doris Day?”

Burt laughed. “Yeah, like Doris Day. But you don’t have to go hiding it from yourself, or from me, or from the person you love.”

 


	12. 1985—Summer

**Summer 1985**

Kurt’s birthday was on Memorial Day that year. He celebrated it by sleeping in and trying a new shish kabob recipe when his dad broke out the grill. Rachel and Mercedes came over for the barbeque; Rachel gave him the soundtrack from the Liza Minelli musical [_The Rink_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpd_0Z00JNw&list=PL-cIAjOpypsGHz-xXQK8miJ8Ra2oJxZ7W) and Mercedes gave him a white satin scarf like the one Prince wore in _Purple Rain_.

Burt didn’t give Kurt his present until after the girls had left. Kurt gave his dad a quizzical look when he opened the VHS copy of _Yentl._ “But we don’t have a VCR.”

Burt shrugged. “I know, but now that you’re friends again with Rachel, I figured you could watch it there.”

Kurt smiled and gave his dad a quick hug. “Thanks, Dad.”

Burt huffed. “Kid, that was way too easy. Aren’t you supposed to press the issue a bit?”

“Um, I don’t know. Should I?”

Burt pulled Kurt into the living room and dragged a heavy box out from under the coffee table. “It’s not exactly a birthday present, ‘cause you’re gonna let me use it, too, but – happy birthday, Kurt.”

Kurt borrowed his dad’s pocket knife to slice open the tape on the box’s flaps. Inside was a shiny new VCR with an aluminum front and wood veneer wrapped around the body and a wireless remote control.

He felt pesky tears forming in his eyes. _Yentl_ was the thing that helped his dad figure out Kurt was gay, but instead of stealing all of Kurt’s Barbra Streisand memorabilia and smashing it with a hammer, he was bringing even _more_ of it into the house than there had been before. And he’d bought a VCR so that Kurt could watch it incessantly at all hours and drive him up the wall with it.

“And since that’s the only videotape either of us own, maybe I could watch it with you sometime?”

Kurt sniffled. “Dad –”

“Yeah?”

“You realize i’m gonna have to get you one of those ‘World’s Greatest Dad’ mugs now, don’t you?”

Burt rolled his eyes. “Kid, it’s just a VCR.”

Kurt squeezed his dad’s hand. “It’s a lot more than that, and you know it.”

* * *

Kurt got a little trigger happy with the remote control once they’d set the whole thing up. But who could blame him? It was the first remote control they’d ever owned. The month after school let out, he watched _Yentl_ over and over again, rewinding his favorite scenes with such abandon that the tape finally broke at the end of June.

There was only one thing to do: go the Video Station to order another copy.

He’d been there a few times already that summer, whenever he was in the mood to see something other than _Yentl_. His heart sank in disappointment every time he walked in and Blaine was nowhere in sight. He’d begun to think that maybe he’d been stupid not to go to the party; stupid not to call every Anderson, Andersen and Andersson in the phonebook; stupid not to break into Dalton Academy’s secretary’s office and steal a copy of the student directory. Because someone else was always working when Kurt went to the video store – usually either the owner or a large white girl with reddish-brown pigtails, enormous pink-framed bifocals, a cute little bow-shaped mouth, and an attitude problem the size of Texas. Kurt rather liked that last thing about her best. Still, it would have been nice to see Blaine behind the counter at least once.

The day that Kurt went to order a copy of _Yentl,_ he didn’t immediately look for Blaine when he stepped through the door – for one thing, he didn’t want to disappointed, and for another, the entryway had been overtaken by a life-size cardboard cut-out of Daryl Hannah in a mermaid tail that demanded his attention.

Kurt had seen _Splash_ in the theater the summer before and still could not get over how real the tail looked, perhaps most because of its color – yellow and copper like Daryl Hannah’s hair, not blue or green like the mermaid tails in fairy books. Whoever designed it was a genius. After all, scales would be made up of the same keratin as hair, so it made sense that their colors would reflect that, and –

“Kurt Hummel! Fancy meeting you here again!” A voice broke through his thoughts.

Kurt looked across the shop toward the counter to find himself looking at a heart-flutteringly handsome boy. Blaine was wearing a short-sleeve yellow shirt and a turquoise bow tie, a combination that made Kurt think of sunshine and spring.

Kurt bit his bottom lip and smiled. “Not _so_ fancy,” he said. “My dad and I are members here, after all.”

Blaine stood up from his stool and leaned against the counter, propping his chin against his folded hands with a smile. The change in angle gave Kurt the barest peek of colorful madras plaid beneath Blaine’s waist.  “And I suppose I _do_ work here. So perhaps it’s rather ordinary seeing you, after all.”

“I wouldn’t say _ordinary,_ either.” Kurt smiled. “I haven’t seen you here all summer. And anyway, I’ve never done an ordinary thing in my life.”

Blaine smiled all the way up to his eyes. “Well, Dalton lets out later than the other schools so I only got to start weekday shifts a few days ago.” Blaine tilted his head curiously. “But what is this about you never doing anything ordinary. You’ve never read the paper? Brushed your teeth? Eaten Cheerios for breakfast?”

“Oh, I do all those things on a fairly regular basis. But I do them _spectacularly._ ” He clasped his hands behind his back and swung the tiniest bit side-to-side, belying the cool expression on his face. “You know, the way I do my gymnastics routines.”

“I should have guessed. Well, Kurt, it’s _spectacular_ to see you as always.” Blaine’s smile seemed to grow even bigger.

“I like your bowtie, by the way. Or, well,” Kurt gestured toward Blaine, making a little circle with his hand, “the whole ensemble. Very springlike.”

“Oh?” Blaine jutted his chin in what Kurt could only interpret as preening.

 _Queer as a three-dollar bill,_ Kurt thought, biting his lip – which would have been overwhelming enough on its own, but then Kurt noticed something else: a small gold stud in Blaine’s right earlobe. It caught a glint from the fluorescent lights, and Kurt’s breath caught in his throat.

“Are you okay?” Blaine said, the confidence draining out of him as quickly as if someone had snapped a finger.

Kurt realized he was staring. He cleared his throat. “Yea –” He cleared it again. “Yes. I just, um, accidentally swallowed my gum.” He hoped that Blaine wouldn’t notice he hadn’t been chewing any.

“Oh! That’s terrible!” Blaine swung around out from behind the counter and touched Kurt’s arm lightly – which should have sent Kurt into a hormonal panic, but he was too distracted by Blaine’s very fitted madras shorts to really notice. “Let me get you some water. I’ll be back in a flash.” And then he disappeared into the back room, leaving Kurt alone to contemplate his own dweebitude.

 _Oh my god you’d already guessed he was gay, the fact that he’s apparently open about it shouldn’t send you into palpitations._ Kurt seriously needed to take a chill pill.

After what couldn’t have been more than a minute but felt like eons of self-chiding, Blaine returned with a styrofoam cup of water and held it out to Kurt. “I hope this helps. Swallowing gum is the worst.” Blaine’s face was crinkled in sympathy, which made Kurt feel even more terrible for lying to him in the first place. He accepted the water from Blaine and gulped it down slowly, trying to concentrate on the rhythm of swallowing to distract himself from the patter of his nerves.

“Thanks,” he said, handing the cup back to Blaine. “That helped a lot.”

“Good. I’m glad.” Something like a blush bloomed across the tips of Blaine’s ears. “You know, I can’t have customers croaking on my shift. It would be bad for business.” He tilted his head and squinted one eye in a way that was possibly flirtatious and definitely adorable. “Also,” he added, nodding gravely, “with you being the competition and all, the state gymnastics federation would have to investigate. I might be held under suspicion.”

Kurt let out a giggle that was not nearly as suave as he would have liked it to be. “I’m hardly the competition. We’re not even at the same level.”

Blaine eyed Kurt from head to toe and back again. “We would be, though, if you had better coaching.”

“Are you belittling my esteemed Coach Ken Tanaka?”

Blaine got a suddenly flustered look, like he wasn’t sure if Kurt was teasing or actually offended. “No. Just – it’s kind of unfair. At Dalton, we have three coaches, and our team’s smaller than yours. And with the endowment, there’s always the money to buy more equipment for practice. And it just … sucks, seeing someone who I know is at least as talented as me not get the opportunities to develop that talent.”

Kurt swayed happily, crossing his arms in front of his chest so he wouldn’t burst. “‘At least as talented as you,’ Mr. Anderson? That’s quite the high bar you’ve set. Could anyone _possibly_ be as talented as you?”

Blaine burst out laughing, his cheekbones flushing like the skin of a peach. “Wow. I sounded kind of arrogant, didn’t it?”

Kurt shrugged one shoulder. “I’ll take it as a challenge. I’d like to see what it does to you when I win.”

“You could do it, you know.” He looked at Kurt’s eyes as he said it and didn’t blink.

The conversation lulled then, mostly because it was Kurt’s turn to speak and his heart was caught in his throat. Blaine smiled shyly and began to rearrange the pens and pencils in the mug next to the cash register. Kurt found himself unable to look away – the way Blaine’s head was tilted, Kurt could see the profile of his eyelashes and they were so incredibly beautiful – long and dark and curled at just the right angle. That and the curve of his earlobe around the gold earring – not to mention the earnestness and sweetness of this boy – they took Kurt’s breath away.

“I totally forgot – was there anything I could help you find today?” Blaine said as Kurt blurted out, like a complete doofus completely lacking in subtlety and charm, “I like your earring. That’s new.”

They looked at each other for a moment, trying to process what the other person had said. Blaine appeared to get it first. A smile spread across his face. “Thank you. You’re the first person who’s said anything about it. I was beginning to wonder if it was invisible.”

“Oh? When did you get it?”

“A couple days ago. I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I was at the mall and I just thought, ‘Why not? I’m off of school and my parents are out of town, so no one can make me take it out for at least a week.’” He scrunched his nose _._ “The girl at the jewelry store kept asking, ‘Wait, are you _sure_ you want it there and not in your other ear? I think you have the wrong ear.’ I was kind of convinced she wasn’t going to do it. But I’d already paid and I kept holding my fingers over my left ear so she couldn’t get it with her gun.” Blaine pinched his unpierced earlobe to illustrate. “So she finally did it.”

“But you don’t think you’re going to be able to keep it?”

Blaine laughed, a tiny sliver of bitterness rising up through the bubbles. “No way. I’m sure my parents will either threaten to disown me or ground me for a century if I don’t take it out. But maybe if I do this every time they go on vacation I’ll finally wear them down.”

Kurt bit his lip, almost too nervous to ask the next question. He made himself ask it, anyway. “Because it’s an earring, or – or because of where it is?”

“Oh, mostly because it’s an earring.” Blaine sighed. “They wouldn’t know the difference between right and left. Any earring on any guy is too girly for them.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. My dad –” Kurt hesitated. He didn’t want to rub Blaine’s face in it, but it was the only way he could think of to make clear to him how much they had in common. “My dad thinks it would be a great idea for me to get one in my right ear, actually.”

Blaine’s jaw dropped. “Not even.”

“Even. He thinks it would be very –” Kurt coughed, the heat spreading on his cheeks. “– ‘fashion-forward’ is what he said, I think.”

“Does he – does he know what it means?”

Kurt nodded. “Yeah. But it applies, so –” _Oh my god oh my god oh my god you just came out to him oh my god._ It was hard for Kurt not to choke on his own tongue. He stood a little straighter, gathered his confidence the way he would if he were preparing to kick a goal. “I guess he thinks it will broaden my prospects?”

Blaine burst out laughing, his face turning as pink as a square of original-flavor Hubba Bubba. “Your dad –” he gasped out as he started to recover. “Sounds awesome.”

Kurt smiled. Smiled because he had made this beautiful boy laugh, and smiled because it was the truth. “He is.”

“I’m glad.” They gazed at each other again and Kurt held on, refusing to look away from those lovely amber eyes until Blaine finally blinked his long, palpitation-inducing lashes and sighed. “I suppose –” Blaine picked up Kurt’s empty cup from the counter and began to fiddle with it “– you came here looking for something, though, not just to have the counterboy talk your ear off.”

Kurt shrugged. “Maybe I came here looking to get my ear talked off.” And without allowing himself to give it any thought, Kurt winked at him – and then immediately proceeded to have an internal freakout from which he only managed to recover by telling himself that he winked at Mercedes all the time and that was just playing, not flirting. Which was a good thing, because Kurt had _no idea_ how to flirt.

“You were probably hoping for Lauren, though.” Blaine smiled and ducked his head – _then winked back._

Kurt managed not to burst into song. Instead, he cleared his throat and said with utmost composure, “Is she the tall one in need of an attitude adjustment?”

“That’s the one.”

“Well, I do rather enjoy her, but I can’t say I’m disappointed to find that the staffing schedule worked out otherwise.”

“No?”

Kurt shook his head. “If I remember correctly, you really do excel in the art of video-store clerking.”

Blaine _giggled_ , the adorable little cutie pie. “Well, let’s see if your faith in my video-clerking skills are well-placed. What is it you were looking for today?”

Kurt felt suddenly nervous. What if Blaine didn’t like _Yentl?_ What if he one of those horrible people who made fun of Barbra Streisand and – No. Kurt was not going to listen to that voice of doubt. He was going to be himself, no matter what. “Well, I wanted to order a video. For purchase.”

“Oh, sure,” Blaine pulled out a fat accordion file from behind the counter and drew a form from it, sliding it across the counter toward Kurt. “Just fill this out. Pen or pencil?”

“Pen, please.” Kurt paid more than usual attention to his penmanship as he wrote down the information required on the form. No, he wasn’t going to change himself for the incredibly cute boy across the counter, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t put his best foot forward. And he had so many styles of penmanship in his arsenal. Should he use flowing cursive or bold capitals? Did it show sophistication or vanity to cross his figure 7s?

He took a deep breath and tried to write as simply and legibly as possible (though he _did_ cross his 7s), handed the form back and, as Blaine started to look it over, watched a smile spread across his (probably quite delicious) lips. “You have good taste. _Yentl_ is another of my favorite movies.”

“Really? Are you Jewish?” Kurt said, and then wanted to kick himself for being such a doofus.

“Um, no. I just really like the story. I know I’m not a yeshiva boy in turn-of-the-century Poland, but it was the first movie I saw where I felt –” Blaine shrugged. “I don’t know. Like it was telling my life story. … Which I realize sounds kind of stupid when I say it.”

Kurt shook his head emphatically. “That doesn’t sound stupid. I feel the same way about it.”

“Yeah?” Blaine said with a smile that turned Kurt’s insides to jelly.

“Yeah,” Kurt had the urge to cover Blaine’s hand with his own, but he didn’t. Instead, he spoke. “Maybe … Maybe when it comes in, you could come over and we could watch it together?”

Blaine’s smile grew bigger, squinching his eyes into fine brown slivers. “I would like that,” he said. “I’d like that a lot.”

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **Author's notes:** Wondering about the towels in Rachel's bathroom or what Kurt's alarm clock looked like? Want to see the cover of that _Newsweek_ Kurt reads in 1983? I have a lot of extra headcanon and many historical notes and photos for this fic. I've posted some of them already on tumblr and will be posting more. You can find them under my [2014 khbb fic headcanon](http://wowbright.tumblr.com/tagged/2014%20khbb%20fic%20headcanon) tag.


End file.
